Mounting her bike now, she heads back into town.
THE NIGHT OF THE HORNY TOADS
The following Saturday around noon Casanova telephones the beanpole and, sounding distracted, proposes they meet for a drink that evening. She says she’d like that very much but she already has plans to meet up with his companion to save the besotted toads. The wind whistles right out of his sails; it seems that his wee friend has already contacted this girl (who’s been monopolizing his brain for three days) and co-opted her in that horny toad soap opera. He hadn’t expected a move of this kind. To gain time, he clears his throat and stammers out something unintelligible. Had his girlfriend divined something and deliberately tried to cross him? It doesn’t seem very likely, but he can’t dismiss that hypothesis. He’s struggling to regain his cocksure good cheer, and ends up telling her he’ll come along too; he’s crazy about anurous amphibians.
The beanpole shows up on her motorbike at the dirt lot where they’ve arranged to meet. It’s pitch dark and many toad-saviors are already milling around, each with a light beam projecting from their heads. The iguana-lover, she too wearing a miner’s helmet, explains why they’ve assembled: every year at this time the toads descend from the woods toward the lake on their ancestral path to reproduction, and come smack up against a road cutting across their way. It’s not even a heavily trafficked road, yet every time a ruthless toad-slaughter takes place. Until the corrupt politicians get their act together and build some tunnels under the asphalt, the only solution is to flag down the cars and give the toads a hand.
The lofty geneticist really likes the tiny zoologist’s joyous energy, her calm dedication (playful, weightless, and unpredictable as a leaf in the wind). It’s clear that she’s absolutely at ease here—with that delicious woodsy smell, the darkness swarming with animals and nocturnal insects—it’s her natural habitat, you might say. And from what she can see, all these people here look quite pleasant, people accustomed to doing good deeds. It occurs to her that maybe her lab isn’t the greatest place in the world, with those emaciated, semi-depressed colleagues. She’s used to electronic interactions, not encounters with bodies that exude all sorts of scents, and gentle exhalations that lightly brush a person’s cheek.
At some point Don Giovanni himself materializes out of the darkness and gives her a hug, eyes down in a pretense of shyness. In truth, he’s worried that in this pitch-black atmosphere his nonchalant charms may not be as effective as in a well-lit café with comfortable seating. And maybe a little concerned that this peculiar young lady may blab to his girlfriend about his phone calclass="underline" a worry that makes her vaguely shadowy air seem even more mysterious and fascinating. Meanwhile, she’s so taken by this throng of affable militants that she completely forgot he was coming. To make up for it, she returns his embrace a little too energetically.
They take up their positions along the paved road and, her genetic acumen at work, our brainy scientist immediately notes that the wave of toads is in no way trying to dodge the cars. Programmed hundreds of millions of years before the first automobile, they’re instead mesmerized by the headlights, probably thinking they see pairs of giant fireflies preparing to mate.[16]
Decked out with a lamp on her brow and a vest with reflector strips, she lends the others a hand, collecting the toads and stacking them neatly in the bucket she’s been handed. When it’s nearly full she gently empties it on the valley side of the road. Frequently, though, the dimwit drivers don’t understand, or pretend not to understand, and refuse to be guided zigzag down the road to avoid hitting those nasty little varmints (everyone’s free to have an opinion, God above all). Due to a pileup of the pulped brutes, stretches of the asphalt are spread with a layer of slippery mucilage, and the cars are skidding and sliding as if on ice.
But the tiny iguana-hugger has taken stock of the problem, and now seizes control of the situation. They will need to organize an alternating one-way traffic plan, she persuades the others. The two volunteers at either end of the descent must keep in phone contact, and those in between will quickly remove the toads from the road surface. Along the stretch bordered by a high wall, where most of the beasts are being mauled (their saviors screaming bloody murder), she makes the drivers slow to a crawl. She knows how to deliver an order and can be brusque when necessary, but they all obey her happily because her voice is clear as a bell and utterly free of authoritarian animus. Although—but perhaps this is just my impression—she’s ever so slightly whiny, à la Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
The lanky one’s up at the top of the critical stretch of road and she’s happy, certain to be doing something genuinely useful. She likes taking the toads in hand and placing them on the valley side, likes running to rescue the suicidal ones, likes clapping her hands triumphantly to speed the laggards along. Her long and not unfleshy legs sprint from one side of the road to the other, she bellows at the weary amphibians, terrorizes the drivers going too fast, stands in the middle of the road to make them slow down. Don Giovanni is posted near her, his face all crumpled up; he handles the toads as if they were dog droppings. Privately (I can tell you with no fear I’m mistaken) he thinks these creatures have survived long enough and it would be no tragedy if they became extinct. But he means to stay by her side and he’s carrying out the mission, not without a stream of witticisms: he imitates toad calls, makes toad speeches, sings arias in toad voices. She laughs. Great mathematical skills do not a sagacious person make.
As always I can’t stop staring at the damn girclass="underline" I watch her as she takes the toads into her long hands as if they were fluffy kittens, I watch her warm to the hunk, not giving him much rope but feeding as necessary his testosteronic amour propre. I imagine—although the verb imagine doesn’t begin to convey in what detail I see the scene—the coitus that’s coming. A three-three, I’m sure of it (I know, that’s not an appropriate expression for a divinity, but it fits). I try to think of something else, to remove myself from the situation. But I can’t take my eyes off her. I see her, and above all, I see what happens next.
Were I a little less tolerant and magnanimous, more like what those hoary old scriveners depict in the Old Testament, I’d have her struck by a passing automobile, fall backward to hit her head hard against the pavement, whack! a tiny trickle of blood, and the problem would be resolved. Race to Hospital to Save Animal-Rights Volunteer in Vain, the local papers would report. The young woman was deceased before reaching the emergency room. Finally, I’d detach my gaze from the Earth (there’s only a thin film of real earth down there) and for a while I’d direct my attention to stars and galaxies. You can thank your lucky stars I’m nothing like the cruel God of the Book of Job, or she’d be done for.
SALVING ECOLOGIST CONSCIENCES
16
As usual I’m presenting what I know for a fact as merely hypothetical, the way writers do to avoid looking too sure of themselves. Not a very brilliant solution, but it’s what they teach in “creative writing.”