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Note from Hannah: In general, we've been trying to post articles that fit with the time of year. But this one tickled my funny bone so much that I thought we'd post it now anyway, despite the reference to autumn and Christmas catalogues. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
edition of Ngaio Marsh thrillers for the last little while. "The characters are really quite nice people," she tells me in a rather touching attempt to justify the habit, "even the Inspector is a gentleman." Fortunately, there is a code of ethics among murder mystery readers that prevents the addict from sharing the plot with others, lest the ending be given away. If I do read the occasional mystery I always start with the last chapter. That way I don’t have to wonder all the way through the book whether it was the butler that "done it."
Crossword puzzles, her other weakness, are a bit more invasive. I even bought her the New York Times Crossword Puzzle Dictionary a while back in the forlorn hope that it would solve the conversational gambit that begins with, "What’s ‘Guido’s note’ in two letters? - I think the second letter is ‘q’." "Well, who are Moab and the Hagarenes?" she said, skirting the issue of her reading matter, "and why was Barney looking like them?" "Barney wasn’t looking like them, he was looking at me the way the Psalmist would have looked at them." Having provided, I thought, sufficient information to have cleared the matter up, I returned my attention to my bowl of Cheerios and the latest Christmas catalogue to have crossed the threshold. A pointed silence broke my reverie. "Well," I offered, "there were some tribes around the Middle East that ancient Israel in general and the Psalmist in particular really couldn’t stand. The Moabites and the Hagarenes were just two of many. Israel’s nose was out of joint with Moab because when they were trying to get out of the wilderness the shortest way possible Moab wouldn’t let them go through its territory. You know how annoying it is when you’re on your way somewhere and you’re in a hurry and there’s a big detour. And as for the Hagarenes, there may be a connection with Abraham and Sarah and that messy situation with Sarah’s slave, Hagar, but nobody knows for sure. Nothing like a marital mix-up, though, for souring a relationship." I returned to the Cheerios. At this point Barney re-appeared outside the big glass doors and sat down, obviously prepared to keep the vigil for a long time. Rudyard Kipling, in the Jungle Books, says animals cannot look a human being in the eye steadily. Barney has obviously never heard this. His was the focused glance of one who has an important message to communicate and, by George, he intended to communicate it. My wife re-entered the conversation with a remark that, to the untutored ear, might have seemed like a rather hesitant observation. "I think he’d like to come in." Mine is not an untutored ear and I knew that the sub-text to this statement was the suggestion that perhaps I might be good enough to get up and let him in. "Yes, exactly. He wants to come in," I responded; "that’s why he went off a minute ago looking at me the way the Psalmist would have looked at Moab and the Hagarenes. He knew that I knew that he wanted to come in and he also knew that I don’t think there’s any need for a big hairy dog in the prime of life to seek refuge from the cold when he’s just had his breakfast. . . and anyway, the temperature is already over 10." It was a weak ending, that appeal to the thermometer, but it was the best I could do on the spur of the moment. Every year around this time I begin to feel about the dogs the way the ancient Romans felt about all those Visigoths massing on the other side of the Rhine river. Once they cross the Rhine (or the threshold) civilisation will totter. In the case of Barney, prohibitions against scoffing the cats’ milk will fall on deaf ears, and Baggins, Barney’s companion, will wait to sneak upstairs and clean up all the cat chow which is put up there specifically so that he won’t get it. Come to think about it, maybe Moab felt that way about the Israelites. Too bad I can’t tell the Psalmist. |
