of Walnuts and Tea

   TONIGHT I lived a memory.

   I had always pictured my wife and I reading books beside each other, drinking hot tea and eating walnuts. I like walnuts. How surreal! I always thought moments like these would happen when someday I was married. Now I lived it.


   What startled me was that we both stopped at one point and reacted to what we had just read. My wife laughed and said "I feel like I'm having a happy day, just like Mole"---for she was reading Grahame's the Wind in the Willows. At the same time, I closed my book and gasped out the word "Horrible!"---for I was reading Lewis' Perelandra.

   Here are the excerpts:


   My wife read: "The Rat brought the boat alongside the bank, made her fast, helped the Mole safely ashore, and swung out the luncheon-basket. The Mole begged as a favour to be allowed to unpack it all by himself; and the Rat was very pleased to indulge him, and to sprawl at full length on the grass and rest, while his excited friend shook out the table-cloth and spread it, took out all the mysterious packets one by one and arranged their contents in due order, still gasping, 'O my! O my!' at each fresh revelation."

   At that point she smiled and spoke.






   Simultaneously, I read: "Whatever was following him would come up that wet, dark hole, would presently be excreted by that hideous duct, and then he would die. He fixed his eyes upon the dark opening from which he had himself just emerged. And then---'I thought as much,' said Ransom.

   "Slowly, shakily, with unnatural and inhuman movements a human form, scarlet in the firelight, crawled out on to the floor of the cave. It was Un-man, of course: dragging its broken leg and with its lower jaw sagging open like that of a corpse, it raised itself to a standing position. And then, close behind it, something else came up out of the hole. First came what looked like branches of trees, and then seven or eight spots of light, irregularly grouped like a constellation. Then a tubular mass which reflected the red glow as if it were polished. His heart gave a great leap as the branches suddenly resolved themselves into long wiry feelers and the dotted lights became the many eyes of a shell-helmeted head and the mass that followed it was revealed as a large roughly cylindrical body. Horrible things followed---angular, many jointed legs, and presently, when he thought the whole body was in sight, a second body came following after it and after that a third. The thing was in three parts, united only by a kind of wasp's waist structure---three parts that did not seem to be truly alinged and made it look as if it had been trodden on---a huge, many legged, quivering deformity, standing just behind the Un-man so that the horrible shadows of both danced in enormous and united menace on the wall of rock behind them."

   Out of context, I'll admit it's not so bad. But it was at that point that I recoiled and she rejoiced. I gasped. She laughed. Isn't it incredible how powerful the written word is? Literature can move and stir and inspire through the tiny black letters on a page printed with them. Words can force grief, instill terror, conjure adoration and bless with a unique kind of satisfaction such as only comes when you read that last sentence on that last page.

   Man, I love books!