“Why bother!?” cried Titmarsh yesterday on the phone. We’d given up on Zoom, not because of those notorious hackings but because the sight of each other — Titmarsh unshaved in his pyjamas and the Authorial Rabbit’s own fur growing into the bizarre semaphore of the deserted island — need no longer be seen.
“About what?”
“About anything.”
Titmarsh is on edge. Too many weeks in self-isolation.
“I don’t trust other people,” he says. “The species. Too many of us, for one thing. Have you seen the population figures? Check out the corona stats site. One column has the population of countries. Unbelievable. Breeding like rats despite all sorts of troubles. And all of them, of us, too selfish, too greedy, too polluting. Too thoughtless, unless the thoughts are foul conspiracies, ways to dismantle what’s left of our social and citizen networks. The old are losing connection with whatever communal ideals had survived to the 21st Century, the young are expressing indifference to or even enthusiasm for the corona virus’ culling of their parents and grandparents.”
“That’s dark. You should take walks.”
“Walks! There’s rioting in the streets. Again!”
“Into nature, forest-bathing they call it. Or just in your neighbourhood, smile at people. It feels really good.”
“Ha.”
Has he hung up?
No.
“I’m telling you, we’re done for. As far as the USA is concerned, read George Packer in the June Atlantic.
“Yes, I did — he’s telling as it is, the lead-up, the current consequences, the moment for change. No better summary.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“You’re going to stop breeding?”
“I’m too old to breed, no more cavorting for this bunny. Never much of a breeder, or a brooder in that fashion anyway. Not the brood hen, brood mare, brood lapis ever, really. Gender notwithstanding.”
Titmarsh snorted. “Your type . . .”
“Meaning?”
“Well, you like your adventures, let’s put it that way.”
“Sex.”
“Exactly.”
“Bit of a generalization, what? Are you transmogrifying into a ‘depraved,’ as the New York Times columnist David Brooks described the Preposterous Pump? He, the Pump, of the moral equivalence, the lootin’ and shooting’?”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Well, worry a little.”
“I know, I know, the ‘I’m not a species-ist’ type of thing.”
“It’s in all of us to some degree, of course. The more self-reflection, awareness, the better; but we can’t be aware of everything in ourselves, not to mention others.”
“It’s the others I can’t stand.”
“They’re easier to stand, understand, when you’re with them, when you can interact in person. Fantasies about others — I’m talking friends, to start with — tend to evaporate when you see them in the flesh again. Relationships get a new positive charge. The Internet makes it tempting not to do that. And of course the virus. And you’d understand other people’s grievances, others more distant, even their nuttiness, if you stepped right into their shoes, lived with them, worked with them or were unemployed with them, in their neighbourhoods, listened and experienced what they’re going through, talked with them as if they were, in not friends, potential friends. Remember how it was when you were a kid, back in the sandbox. Everyone was a friend.”
“True, true, true, I hear you.” Titmarsh is calming down.
“Hard to do right now, making these connections.”
Titmarsh is returning to his old self, I hear it in his voice. “We don’t do it in safer times either. Just hunker down, stay in our neighbourhood. Make no effort to connect.”
“Helps to join clubs, the non-exclusive types, or service organizations. Or at least take those walks.’
“I should. I did once. Gotten lazy. I will.”
“There you are. Maybe we should break out of our bubble in a careful way. I’ll pop over. We can sit around outside.”
“I’ll shave.”
“I’ll groom my ears.”
“See you soon.”
J. B. Thompson 