The Laughter of Adam and Eve

Plague Tale

51 Plague Tale Come lately to that place in his acquaintance with himself, and just about to turn the corner to the park they’ll stroll, he has a sudden feeling for things that haven’t happened yet but must, he’s sure of it now,   and so begins to tell her a story with intent, the one that he’s reminded of but only imperfectly remembers, some version of a plague tale set among the dwellers in a piney hollow, isolates together. A man, the mountainy man of the story, bitten by something rabid or venomous, gathers his children around him.    No, of course he’s a husband only, and it’s his wife, new wife, girl-wife, as young as she could be up in those mountains back in that time.     He speaks out of his fated distance to one who depends on him but might do other than he asks, to the beloved who must at all costs listen. He speaks for when he’ll thirst and rage, struck mad enough to do her harm. No matter what he says or does, threatens or begs, do not come near, don’t try to free him, leave him water, yes, slip food into the utmost range the chain allows his movement then run away. What’s she to do? I mean the one who hears the telling outside the tale, and gets the warning certainly, but still thinks he’s full of it— dopey with his notions of who depends on whom—and what should she reply to this? 52 She was an English major, too. She could go story for story with him: the fairy tale about the little man who knows he doesn’t know a thing but picks up junk dropped in the road—a length of rope, a chicken bone— and by resourcefulness and pluck turns these to tools that win for him a princess bride, after which, finis, the narrative simply closes. What doom has this man of hers caught anyhow? We’re all of us doomed if you think about it way too hard, headed for what we’re headed for. She has feelings for the future of her own that want her close by him (though not so much when he’s depressed and dire), none of which she says by any story, few words even, only her refusal to move off, and right now her contrivance of a stumble that jostles him nearly off the narrow path. ...