The Smallest Snail

Friebert 37 Stuart Friebert The Smallest Snail It's honest, very honest, I tell the kids who find it on the wall outside our house in Zurich. Naming it seems more important than eating today, and we take our time. I know how we get to the surname. Romerhof is the little square where our tram stops. James is still a mystery, unless it's just for the sound. We give up on a middle initial, and start in on the glass cage, pick twigs from around the garden, make a little tree for climbing. Sarah and Stephen lift James in together. If we listen as hard as humanly possible, we can pick up tiny dots and dashes of his rasp, as if he were sending signals to the remotest radio in the sky. Snug in his house, he sticks out just a speck as if to say, Thanks, I'm fine. I swear he claps when he touches his antennas together. Sarah notices he tries to get larger at times, and Stephen points to the swelling folds in his neck. Mostly I hope we won't betray him if we happen to get hold of something more important. As is usual with such acquisitions, we lose track of James gradually, though I know the children remember to feed him now and then. One day, James doesn't seem to be there at all. We can just make out his trail down the glass but lose it at the table's edge. We know he's out there, getting drunk perhaps on bits of wine 38 the minnesota review we spill, ignoring the graininess of the universe, but we haven't seen him recently. I sometimes imagine he's on the page of the book I'm reading, but more likely he's spent the past six months on the basement steps. In case he comes back, Sarah's working away on tiny ballet slippers, while Stephen continues to catch flies. We never talk of whether we'll ever find him again. One thing I am sure of, long after his life, James will turn up in our dreams, dumbly look back at us, stretch out, a bit haggard, scientific, a dogmatic theist, a pretty good argument for any life at all. ...