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Exuviae of the Chitonous |
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The tinkling of filamental dust in a blown bulb would have been more audible than the voice of his youngest daughter, who, escorting me across the dining room to a niche in the wall where there lay an enamaled bowl, whispered, "This is where we put the orchid blossoms after they've fallen off the stalk." They were, however, not blossoms at all but rather the shed skins of miniature animals who appeared to have suffered terribly in their moulting. "Why do you tell them they're orchids?" I asked her father later that night. "You know, when I was younger," he told me, "I used to batten on such strange notions, that insects, for instance, must endure all those horrors of metamorphosis chiefly for my benefit, to add to my store of fine phrases . . . 'tortured exuviae of the chitonous' comes immediately to mind. But that my love of phrases would keep me at a distance from, well . . . most everything else . . . for all my thinking, that's a thought I never had entertained until it was far too late. A long way around to say that if everything were swallowed up by orchids . . . you know, despite the depradations of collectors, it remains the largest family of flowering plants . . . let's say things could be far worse. Except for me. I shall never, of course, no matter how hard I try, be swallowed up." "But really," he said over cognacs, glancing at his daughters, "It's not so bad. Exile has plenty of meanings to keep one occupied, even this strange exile of mine, for which I have only myself to blame." "Anything can be an orchid, if you look at it long enough," he said after a painfully extended silence. "Anything can be anything." |
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