How We Came To Be (II)
The Mantis and the Moth
There was a time when, for a few years, my parents and my youngest sister and I lived in small rural town in the south. We were used to life in the bush and this was not the bush or a farm. It was an agricultural region and the majority of the folk spoke a different language and were different, from us.
We had come from another place, to the north. A changing political landscape and necessity had moved us south. For the time being anyway.
A Travelling Man
My father had through expediency become a travelling salesman for an agri-chemicals company. Not his first choice, of that I’m sure. I think he enjoyed the travelling, as I know he loved being on the road, finding new places, driving the rural roads and meeting the rural folk. He also enjoyed getting to know new people and even though he would have been met with scepticism and even disdain by these hard sons of the land that were his market, he did I believe, gain the respect of at least a few of them. And in turn gave them the respect that was their due. I know for sure that I never heard him speak ill of them, this conservative and insular race that fortune and necessity had thrust him amongst.
I did not see much of him in those few years, and only one night stands bright in my memory. I was 7 or 8 years old at the time.
Summer Storm
It was summer, and the summer storms were spectacular. It was night, and perhaps it was the heavy rolling thunder or the bolts of lightening which woke me. I found my father sitting alone in the kitchen, smoking a cigarette, with a single candle burning in the middle of the kitchen table. The warm flickering glow of the candle contrasting heavily with the flashes of light from the storm outside, clearly visible through the kitchen windows which stood open, curtains drawn, as if to usher in the storm. The electricity was off, tripped by a lightning strike. I’m damn sure he preferred it that way.
Smoke Rings
I joined him at the table, with its light green linoleum veneer. It was a small table and we sat close. The candle was centred in a simple enamel candle holder, the light coffee cream colour common to the time. My father dragged on his cigarette and blew perfect smoke rings. He would blow an especially slow, thick ring, which would leave his mouth in no particular rush and saunter out into the still air, slowly and magically increasing in diameter, until it would seemingly sit mid-air in suspended animation. Then he would blow a whole set of smaller rings right through the centre of that mother ring, in quick succession. They were like little smoke chickens running after their mother like they’d suddenly realised they were being left too far behind. And the mother just sat there waiting for its chickens to catch up, unruffled, calm and still all in one piece. I was never sure how he did that. And even if he had the chance, I’m not sure he would have taught me. I’ve never seen anyone else do it.
My dad smoked and I marvelled at his smokey ships sailing out into the crisp evening air. We may have talked. The thunder and lightning continued unabated outside; great peals of thunder, crackling with ferocity and unimaginable power, preceded by the silent blinding blue-white lightening. The brighter and longer the light, the greater the crack of thunder that would follow. It was always exciting counting the seconds between the light and the sound. You knew it was coming, you knew it would be fierce, perhaps even the fiercest and loudest of the night — but it never failed to catch you by surprise. The magic and power of a proper storm.
When the storm had passed words could be spoken, and heard. I don’t recall what we spoke of, but I do recall the moth and the mantis. The mantis landed nonchalantly on my father’s shoulder, emerald green and proud as hell, disdainful of us mere humans on whom it had chosen to perch. Its singular intent was the moth and we mattered nothing. The moth was drawn to the flame, and the mantis was drawn to the moth. And left to their own devices, we both knew that the mantis would get the moth.
The Candle
The moth in stark contrast to its nemesis fluttered hopelessly and recklessly around the candle’s flame. At the base of the enamel candle holder was a pool of semi molten wax, into which the moth inevitably fell. It fluttered hopelessly on its remaining wing trying in vain to free itself. If its chances of survival since the arrival of the mantis were slim, it was from that moment on, doomed. The mantis however, knew better than to venture near that waxy trap. It fluttered off my father’s shoulder, back out into the night through the kitchen’s half-open stable door. I think of them now as the wolf and the sheep; the mantis full of quiet cunning and understated guile, strong and arrogant; and the moth, well …. just a sheep really.
The moth was trapped and going nowhere. We both looked down at this little creature, beautiful and doomed. We were the emperors and it was the sacrifice in the coliseum below. What was it to be — thumbs up or down? I picked up the candle and dropped wax onto the moth, until it stopped fluttering.
My father said nothing. He only looked at me in a certain way. And I knew immediately that what I had done, was somehow, in some small way, not quite right. In all truth there was no other end for the moth, but still I wished that I had not done it. That was the first time that I gained a glimpse of the kind of man my father was, and later, why he chose the life he did.
