PAUL BRESLOW
97
this advertisement. It says the bugs are Long-Headed Flour Beetles,
Latheticus Oryzae,
a form of granary weevil , and that you can order
more of them, from a Post Office Box .
Selling is death, I said.
But it's just silly, she said. According to the card, the beetles are
a good source of protein . The card is an annotation of the bugs .
Do you want me to lose? I shouted. Do you want the desolation
of exhibited failure?
I don't know why it has to be hidden, she said softly. I suppose
it may have something to do with the tides.
You are, I said , in a state of error. You are totally wrong. A
seller is a danger, a potential murderer, a disguised man with a gun,
like a sniper. The sniper, or the seller, whatever the case may be,
carries within him the forces that build up, in tiny undetected incre–
ments, a calcific node from which there spring, like leaves, hard and
bony plates, flat and thin plaques, his armor; and that shields him,
certainly, but it also shadows him; and within that darkness, that
safe darkness , the sniper cannot find his own placemarks; he is con–
demned forever, to look out, beyond the shadows, to his victims .
Have you abnormalled? she asked.
I stood up . It's cold here, I said, tundra cold. I took a few steps
forward. It's hot over here, I said, if I wanted to be hot I would buy
a safari to Botswana . I moved crabwise to the side. Here, I com–
plained, it's cold again. This room, I said, is a cube of stasis; I own
this room and yet it's hostile, it doesn't fit me, it's too loose and it
smells like wet gabardine.
Perhaps upstairs, Annette said.
Up there? Don't be silly, I said, it's like a murdered breeding–
pen up there.
How can I possibly calm you? Annette asked .
By living a perfect childhood in this house, I said, for an hour
or so , in about 1880, on a late winter afternoon.
She succeeded.
She found, in the attic, an oil lamp with a shade of dragon–
fly glass , and set it on the dining table. After announcing buttered
scones , she served me toasted slices of Wonder Bread, arranged on
the upturned lid of an Italian cookie tin. She described the snow
crystals on the window panes, the steaming breath of blanketed
horses, the young men tramping in high-buttoned shoes, their skates
slung over their shoulders, on their way to a solidly frozen river.
Rising late the next day , we went at noon to the zoo, which was
