by Daniel Klein
We might be drawn first to the heavenly smile of the Asian girl who is seated between a handsome Hispanic young man and a middle-aged woman with frizzy red hair whose own smile—particularly its impish asymmetry—bears a remarkable resemblance to the girl’s. This child’s sparkling eyes dart from one face to another, never settling for longer than a split second. It is obvious that she is not merely observing with her flashing eyes; she is, in a sense, conducting with them, quickening the tempo of this little band’s interplay, brightening its tone. It strikes us that she, more than anyone else at the table, is conscious of the unrepeatable significance of this gathering.
Next, we observe the dark complected young man to her right who, even as we watch him, becomes increasingly animated. He has just taken his first spoonful of the soup and every eye is upon him. He cocks his head back, causing a hank of black hair to fall across his forehead, and he looks toward the ceiling as if in deep solitary thought. He is impersonating a connoisseur, say a wealthy Frenchman in a four-star Bogotá restaurant who is evaluating the local Cabernet. Suddenly he stands, reaches for his wine glass and raises it high. He is toasting the soup. Everyone applauds, including the very young, red headed boy sitting on the other side of the red haired woman. Before we move on, we note that this little kid clearly was not in need of anyone else’s appraisal of the soup—he is already reaching for seconds.
Next, we observe the oldest and quietest occupant of the table, a beefy, white haired man with rosy cheeks that appear even redder than they are in contrast to his white stubble. He, too, is looking from face to face, but his gaze always returns to the blonde, thirtyish woman directly across from him. Watching him for a moment, we gradually realize that every time he diverts his eyes from this woman they have just begun to dampen. Something about seeing her moves him deeply, so he has to look away to regain control of himself before he looks at her again. We cannot know what prompts this older fellow’s reaction, but if it includes some sadness, it also contains contentment.
We cannot help but wonder what it is about this blonde woman that so disturbs the older man. She is classically beautiful; indeed, there is something regal about her bearing, her head fully upright on her slender neck. Even her eyes bespeak good breeding—deep mineral blue, a rarefied earthiness. Only by inspecting them closely do we detect the bewilderment they reveal. It is as if this young woman cannot know for certain where to look or what to feel, as if she cannot connect completely with either the world around her or the self within her.
As with any group this large, a minority of its members speak more and more loudly and animatedly than all the others combined. Among those here is a pony-tailed and bearded, Semitic-looking man whose voice is the only one to carry through the double-glazed window, not that we can make much sense of the words that penetrate the glass—‘biconditional’ and ‘recursive’ and ‘ontological.’ Surprisingly, the off-the-beat cadence of his speech and the goofball expression on his face seem more like those of a late night TV comedian than of a grown man given to using words like ‘recursive’ around a dining table. It is clear this man has met his match in the two other members of this vocal minority, the red haired woman and the attractive black woman seated to his right, both of whom cut him off regularly in mid-declamation.
There is an unusually pretty teenage girl at the table too, sandwiched between the handsome young soup connoisseur and the blonde woman who so deeply affects the white haired man across from her. The girl is blonde also; in fact, her eyes and mouth and long waist so closely resemble that of the woman next to her we have no doubt they are closely related, probably mother and daughter. There is so much emotion in this teenager’s face, feelings that appear simultaneously to span hopefulness and despair, lovingness and fear, that it is difficult for us to look upon her face for long. In our uneasiness we drop our gaze, and in so doing we see one of this girl’s hands resting on the thigh of the dark-complected young man and her other tightly clasping the hand of the woman on her right, the woman who most certainly is her mother.
Now would seem the apposite moment for us to step away from the deVries family’s porch window, to gather up our jackets and bags and depart the theater into the cool evening with a sense of quiet fulfillment.
Now.
The world is a den of thieves and night is falling. Evil breaks its chains and runs through the world like a mad dog. The poison affects us all. No one escapes. Therefore let us be happy while we are happy. Let us be kind, generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world.