A Little Learning (a very short and not entirely dark story)
Seated with his wife under the pergola on the terrace of Villa Francesca, high above Capri’s Marina Grande, Sir Rufus tossed aside his book.
It was a very good book, he thought. A book about writing poetry, full of lists and exercises, and bullet-pointed summaries. Quite a few diagrams, too. His sort of book.
He resolved to begin with metaphor and simile.
“I think it’s going to rain,” his wife said as she watched dark clouds scud across the Bay of Naples. “I hope we’ll be dry under the shade of this pergola.”
“Dry as a bone,” said Sir Rufus. Then, for good measure, “Like water off a duck’s back.”
“Oh, you beast,” cried his wife, stepping on his book as she stormed off into the Villa.
Momentarily confused, Sir Rufus watched the clouds draw closer and closer until the first, fine spray of rain whipped under the pergola roof.
“Ah,” he murmured, and remembered their pet duck, Bobble, and the large pond outside their country house in England, and the waterfall he’d constructed, and the day he’d opened the valve, and the torrent of water cascading down just as Bobble swam past.
And the sad little funeral in the corner of the garden.
