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By Root 2278 0

the dealings of ordinary human civilization. I have often wondered what would have become of Pinocchio had he chosen not to become a real boy, but rather to defiantly remain forever a puppet. When he becomes a real boy, his new human flesh grows smooth over his knobby wooden joints, and his eyes suddenly glisten with authentic moisture. He has become fully human—but at what price? Now that he has traded his wooden body for an organic body of electricity, bone, blood, and water, he will presumably now grow into a man, who will eventually die. Does Pinocchio realize he has traded a state of emotionally immature immortality for the mere right to call himself a human being, even though this is a world in which such a right matters little in the course of everyday business? Surely no right-thinking consciousness would swap gold for bronze like that! He’s only let himself get cheated one more time! Later, Pinocchio the real man will have to come to terms with the full implications of his humanity (wisdom, death) in order to realize that he doomed himself with the final mistake he committed in his prehuman puppethood.

XV

As we drove home from the lab that day—or maybe it was the next day, or the day after—I noticed Lydia seemed to be in higher spirits than usual. Not that she was ever morose, but she was typically serious. Yet today she was in a jocular, airy-fairy mood uncharacteristic of her. My own fragile soul was still a little rattled from my encounter with Tal’s horrifying puppet. It was the beginning of spring. I think it was among the first days of the year that were not abysmally cold. All over the city the gutter pipes whispered with snowmelt, and maybe even a hopeful bird or two dared to sing an early requiem for winter. As soon as we got in the car, as soon as Lydia had buckled me in and chortled up the engine with the keys, her hand leapt to the radio dial, and turned it on and turned it up, and proceeded to sing along with the song that issued from the holes in the dashboard of the car. She was in a good mood. She drove us home.

Scarcely had we shut the door, scarcely had our coats been hung and our shoes kicked off, when she started to cook. I offered to help. Lydia glanced down at me as I stretched my long hairy arms up at her with my eyes pleading for the mere privilege of her permission to participate in this activity; she smiled sweetly at me, patted my head and declared that she “could handle it.” She played joyful music on her stereo and sang along to it. Suddenly the kitchen was alive with the clamor of pots and pans, with hissing water, with warmth and rising steam, with the smells of chopped ingredients releasing their biological perfumes into the air as the blade of the chopping knife liberated the odoriferous chemicals trapped inside the bulbs of garlic and the onions.

“Tal is coming over for dinner tonight,” she chirped above the knock-knock-knock of the knife against the cutting board, by way of explanation for all this culinary activity.

I asked her what was for dinner.

“Paella,” she said. For all I understood her she might as well have made the word up on the spot. Lydia was a wonderful cook, by the way. Ordinarily she prepared for us delicious dishes that were suitable to my palate. Spaghetti and meatballs, I liked. Hot dogs, I liked. Macaroni and cheese, I liked. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I liked. But this? What was it, even? The dish that was taking shape under Lydia’s hands seemed to be a counterintuitive and frankly insane one. It looked to me like something a Martian would have for dinner, this bubbling slumgullion of beans and peas and boiled sea creatures swimming in weird yellow slop.

I kept my ears trained to the ceiling, listening for the tinny moans and ululations and the spirited squawkings of parrots that would indicate that Mr. Morgan was practicing his bagpipes, and perhaps would let me listen to him. Nothing, though. Mr. Morgan was not practicing his bagpipes on this particular evening. I asked Lydia for permission to go upstairs and see if Mr. Morgan wanted