The moral of the story about the child who was dipped in magical water was: nobody is one hundred percent immortal. Except God, for those who believed in God. The moral of the story about the painter was: you never know who will be famous and talented, so try not to get discouraged, and don’t allow handguns. The moral of the story about gray teeth was: sometimes by trying to do a good thing, you do a bad thing instead.
7. Fables in the Car
Aesop’s fables were where the idea of having a moral came from, but some of them made no sense whatever. Before bed, Nory’s parents read to her in alternation with each other, so one night her mother would read something, the next night her father. That first week of September, while Nory was listening to her mother read A Hundred and One Dalmations, she was listening to her father read Aesop’s Fables. He very often fell asleep a few minutes into reading. You could tell he was beginning a doze because he would start pronouncing the words in a hurrying murmur and then stop. Murmur, then stop, murmur, stop. And phrases would get into the story that had nothing to do with anything. If Nory gave him a nudge in the arm, he would bob awake and squinch his eyes shut very tight and flare them open them very wide and forge off into another page. Then very gradually his voice would fall away into a mutter again. ‘Seward’s folly hima hima hima cartouche hima hima Barcelona hima hima hima.’ Sometimes he read for pages that way, it was really quite remarkable, mixing giblet after giblet of totally unrelated nonsense into the story. ‘And the canisters could use some priming,’ is something that he said one time, in the middle of the story of the crow and the stones. Nory wrote it down and told them all at breakfast. If the story was good, Nory’s father didn’t fall asleep nearly as fast as if the story was going through a boring stretch. Then the nudging didn’t work and she finally had to say, ‘Daddy, you’re tired, aren’t you?’
‘How did you guess that?’ Nory’s father would ask, from deep in his doze.
‘Well, for one thing, the book seemed to be flopping.’
‘Was it flopping?’
‘Yes, it was.’
And then Nory’s father would say, ‘Well, I guess that just about wraps it up,’ and shut the book and say goodnight. The next time that it was his turn to read, he wouldn’t remember any of what he had already read, and he would go through several pages, saying ‘Did we read that? Did we read that?’ Nory usually could remember because she had a not-too-shabby memory for things that were read to her. It was very rare for Nory’s mother to fall asleep reading to Nory. Sometimes Nory almost fell asleep when she was reading to her dolls but almost never when she was being read to.
One night Nory’s father managed to read three Aesop’s fables in a row that just weren’t up to sniff. Aesop had had a very bad fable-writing day. Maybe the wax wasn’t smooth enough for him to concentrate. Nory’s father fell asleep after about ten minutes of reading and slept until Nory’s mother woke him up by coming in to give Nory a K and H and a G of W. That anagram stood for a ‘Kiss and a Hug and a Glass of Water.’ The next day, they drove to Wisbech to see Peckover House, a Stately Home, and on the way Nory had the idea of getting each one of them to think up a fable, as something to do in the car.
Her mother’s fable was about an ivy plant that overdoes himself and stays green year round, even through the freezing snows of winter. First he was evergreen for the pure joy of it, and then he was a little less happy and a little more bitter because the other plants failed to follow his lead of staying green and even made little jokes about the ivy plant and his odd winter habits. Finally the ivy got so upset with the rest of the garden for sleeping through the lonely cold months that his anger made his leaves turn brown at the edges and his tendrils stop uncurling. The gardener, who was used to his being green and healthy all year, pulled him up by the roots and threw him in the compost dump. And the moral was: Stay out of politics.
Nory’s father’s fable was about a cat who loved tuna catfood in cans and refused to eat the whitefish or the beef or the liver in cans, even though he was starvingly hungry, in order to try to force the girl who cared for him to give him tuna every day. The girl got so worried about the cat’s not eating that she took him to the vet. The vet said he was healthy, but he said that she must feed him only dry catfood from now on. And the moral was: He who wants only tuna, may end up with only dry.
Nory’s fable was about two Korean girls. Once there were two little Korean girls. Their parents had died in a car accident, because the ambulance had not had the Jaws of Life to use to save them. The Jaws of Life are, as you know, huge scissors that can cut through metal and pull an injured person from a car. So the poor, tired little girls were sent to an orphanage. There they put up signs that said ‘Help!’ because they were treated very badly. Seeing their signs, a kind woman, who wanted so much to have a little girl, adopted them. They were very grateful. But one day the mother, whose name was Nanelan, had to go to a different country to the Queen’s birthday party. She asked the only couple she could get in touch with to watch her children. But she did not know that these were evil people. The first day she was gone they spilled a puddle of water to make the children slip and hurt themselves and go to the hospital, so that they would not have to pay for the children’s food. The next night the couple, dancing with evil joy, fell into the puddle. Hearing this, the insurance company refused to pay the hospital, and the couple lost all the money. And the moral is: Do not be selfish or your curse will come back.
They asked Littleguy for a fable, too. He came up with two. His first fable was called ‘Bulldozer.’ Once upon time was a train. A train on a track. It saw a diesel train coming on the track, too, and they crashed. The two went kssssh! All the pieces came off they. The puff-puff broke, and the wheels broke, and the track broke. Everything broke. But they went to the shop and got fixed and they got painted, and went to the station and people came on them and they set off. The end.
Littleguy’s second fable was called ‘Browned.’ Once upon time was a bulldozer, pulling a trailer filled with all kinds of choo-choos, digger-trucks, and auger drillers, and dump trucks. And the other ones that have round things, cement mixers. The bulldozer saw a car pulling a trailer by it. And they didn’t crash, they just went right by they. The bulldozer drove and drove and drove and drove and drove and drove and drove. The bulldozer’s name was Browned. The end.
Since there were no morals in Littleguy’s two fables, Nory added them on. The moral of the first fable was: sometimes when there’s a crash, it turns out all right in the end. And the moral of the second one was: sometimes things don’t even crash at all.
At Peckover House, Nory got a National Trust eraser from the gift shop after they had tea.
8. About Debbie
Nory was proudly born in Boston, Massachusetts, in America. A lot of houses looked like Peckover House in Boston. Boston was old in a beautiful way and it was especially important to Nory because it was frankly the only city she had ever lived in, except Venice for three weeks when she was three years old, where she was baptized with a surprising splash of water in a huge cold church, holding her own candle, that later got broken and had to be thrown out even though it was wrapped in tissue paper. In Venice she also ate pitch-black spaghetti. The black was squid ink and it was quite good. Long ago, they used to use squid ink to make real ink, for using in Medium Nib fountain pens, but probably it would make a kind of ink that no ink eradicator would eradicate. Ink eradicators were made from pigskin and pig-waste, according to a girl at Threll Junior School, who said her sister once visited an eradicator factory.