Mean streak

The people of Lithuania are different from the people of France. Jean was lying on the floor next to me, sometimes speaking to the ceiling, sometimes resting on her elbow and speaking to me. She talked for a long time. She usually used a tone of exaggerated irony with swooping phrases. But at times there was a sense of wonder in her voice, a voice painted with many thin layers of tones. Was it wonder? She was amazed at what she was describing, a place where everything stood out sharply, gestures or colors or assertions.

So the Lithuanians made that kind of impression. The French didn’t. They were just another version of us.

On TV we watched a movie starring the Three Stooges. It was a Technicolor musical. The Three Stooges were costumed like Teletubbies and the landscape was similarly extraterrestrial, possibly the insides of a computer. The Three Stooges threw whipped cream pies at Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, whose faces disappeared behind thick white paste.

Most butterflies are well-intentioned. They do their best to make certain that when they flap their wings it won’t stir up the kinds of breezes that might cause a tornado. A handful of butterflies, however, are bad. They are always trying to be where their flapping might do the most damage.

Jean’s irony became even more exaggerated. She is seductive. We are closer to each other. “I think I have a mean streak,” she says out loud, not to me.

At the zoo bookstore, I find an out-of-print book by Kenward Elmslie, “with” Michiko Kakutani (in a smaller font size).