tookthem all out to a restaurant. “Death … by none art thou understood,” one boy kept saying. “Henry Vaughan.”
They were all bright enough, Anne supposed. After a while he stopped saying it. They had calamari, duck, champagne, everything. They were on the second floor of the restaurant and had the place to themselves. They stayed for hours. By the time they left, one girl was saying earnestly, “You know a word I like is
interplanetary
.”
Then she brought them back to the house, although she locked Harry’s rooms. Young people were sentimentalists, consumers. She didn’t want them carrying off Harry’s things, his ties and tapes, anything at all. They sat in the kitchen. They were beginning to act a little peculiar, Anne thought. They didn’t talk about Harry much, though one of them remembered a time when Harry was driving and he stopped at all the green lights and proceeded on the red. They all acted as though they’d been there. This seemed a fine thing to remember about Harry. Then someone, a floppy-haired boy who looked frightened, remembered something else, but it turned out this was associated with a boy named Pete who was not even present.
At about one o’clock in the morning, Anne said that when she and Harry were in Africa, during the very first evening at the hotel in Victoria Falls, he claimed he’d seen a pangolin, a peculiar anteater-like animal. He described it, and that’s clearly what it was, but a very rare thing, an impossible thing for him to have seen, really, and no one in the group they would be traveling with believed him. He had been wandering around the hotel grounds by himself, so there were no witnesses to it. The group went on to discuss the falls. Everyone could verify the impression the falls made. So many hundreds of millions of gallons of water went over each minute or something, andthere was a drop of four hundred feet. Even so, everyone was quite aware it wasn’t like that, no one was satisfied with that. The sound of the falls was like silence, total amplified silence, the sight of it exclusionary. And all that could be done was to look at it, this astonishing thing, Victoria Falls, then eventually stop looking and go on to something else.
The next day Harry had distinguished himself further by exclaiming over a marabou stork, and someone in the group told him that marabous were gruesome things, scavengers, “morbidity distilled,” in the words of this fussy little person, and certainly nothing to get excited about when there were hundreds of beautiful and strange creatures in Africa that one could enjoy and identify and point out to the others. Imagine, Anne said, going to an immense new continent and being corrected as to one’s feelings, one’s perceptions, in such a strange place. And it was not as though everything was known. Take the wild dogs, for example. Attitudes had changed utterly about the worth of wild dogs …
Abruptly, she stopped. She had been silent much of the evening and felt that this outburst had not gone over particularly well. Harry’s friends were making margaritas. One of them had gone out and just returned with more tequila. They were watching her uncomfortably, as though they felt she should fluff up her stories on Harry a bit.
Finally one of them said, “I didn’t know Harry had been to Africa.”
This surprised her. The trip to Africa hadn’t been a triumph, exactly, but it hadn’t been a disaster either and could very well have been worse. They had been gone a month, and this had been very recently. But it didn’t matter. She would probably never see these children again.
They sat around the large kitchen. They were becoming more and more strange to her. She wondered what they were all waiting for. One of them was trying to find salt. Was there no salt? He opened a cupboard and peered inside, bringing out a novelty set, a plastic couple, Amish or something; she supposed the man was pepper, the woman salt. They were all
They were all bright enough, Anne supposed. After a while he stopped saying it. They had calamari, duck, champagne, everything. They were on the second floor of the restaurant and had the place to themselves. They stayed for hours. By the time they left, one girl was saying earnestly, “You know a word I like is
interplanetary
.”
Then she brought them back to the house, although she locked Harry’s rooms. Young people were sentimentalists, consumers. She didn’t want them carrying off Harry’s things, his ties and tapes, anything at all. They sat in the kitchen. They were beginning to act a little peculiar, Anne thought. They didn’t talk about Harry much, though one of them remembered a time when Harry was driving and he stopped at all the green lights and proceeded on the red. They all acted as though they’d been there. This seemed a fine thing to remember about Harry. Then someone, a floppy-haired boy who looked frightened, remembered something else, but it turned out this was associated with a boy named Pete who was not even present.
At about one o’clock in the morning, Anne said that when she and Harry were in Africa, during the very first evening at the hotel in Victoria Falls, he claimed he’d seen a pangolin, a peculiar anteater-like animal. He described it, and that’s clearly what it was, but a very rare thing, an impossible thing for him to have seen, really, and no one in the group they would be traveling with believed him. He had been wandering around the hotel grounds by himself, so there were no witnesses to it. The group went on to discuss the falls. Everyone could verify the impression the falls made. So many hundreds of millions of gallons of water went over each minute or something, andthere was a drop of four hundred feet. Even so, everyone was quite aware it wasn’t like that, no one was satisfied with that. The sound of the falls was like silence, total amplified silence, the sight of it exclusionary. And all that could be done was to look at it, this astonishing thing, Victoria Falls, then eventually stop looking and go on to something else.
The next day Harry had distinguished himself further by exclaiming over a marabou stork, and someone in the group told him that marabous were gruesome things, scavengers, “morbidity distilled,” in the words of this fussy little person, and certainly nothing to get excited about when there were hundreds of beautiful and strange creatures in Africa that one could enjoy and identify and point out to the others. Imagine, Anne said, going to an immense new continent and being corrected as to one’s feelings, one’s perceptions, in such a strange place. And it was not as though everything was known. Take the wild dogs, for example. Attitudes had changed utterly about the worth of wild dogs …
Abruptly, she stopped. She had been silent much of the evening and felt that this outburst had not gone over particularly well. Harry’s friends were making margaritas. One of them had gone out and just returned with more tequila. They were watching her uncomfortably, as though they felt she should fluff up her stories on Harry a bit.
Finally one of them said, “I didn’t know Harry had been to Africa.”
This surprised her. The trip to Africa hadn’t been a triumph, exactly, but it hadn’t been a disaster either and could very well have been worse. They had been gone a month, and this had been very recently. But it didn’t matter. She would probably never see these children again.
They sat around the large kitchen. They were becoming more and more strange to her. She wondered what they were all waiting for. One of them was trying to find salt. Was there no salt? He opened a cupboard and peered inside, bringing out a novelty set, a plastic couple, Amish or something; she supposed the man was pepper, the woman salt. They were all
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