Elinor's Socks
She caught him with a fishhook. It
was an accident. She was trying to catch a sock which had fallen from the
balcony. She had almost hooked it when he walked into the line. She jerked to
retrieve it and hooked him through the lip. Her mother was cross. That was no
way to catch a man, she said, Do you want a child with a fish-hook lip? Her
brother's friend had a fish-hook lip. She didn't want such a child. Only one
thing was possible; she would have to cut the line. The man flapped and looked flummoxed. Rescue
me, he mouthed and from his pursed lips flew flowers and sea anemones that,
self-entwining, beckoned her compassion.
Unable to break the line or find a
knife she panicked. The man flapped and life fled him in a gasp.
The police said it was murder. Her
lawyer said it was self-defence. The jury found in her favour, but the
experience of the trial haunted her and for years after she had nightmares of the
foreman of the jury looking at her and winking at her – what did he mean by
that brief closing of one eye? And the judge: the way he smiled when he warned
her not to fish in the street. Why? What did they mean? Were they saying, We
will save and protect you but you must repay our kindness. In her bed at night
she imagined them calling for payment. But I have nothing to offer, she would
say, and they would force her to wash floors and clean dishes. Was this what
she deserved for the attempted retrieval of a sock.
A psychologist friend of her
mother's said she needed to find generosity within her; to allow her soul to
become disorderly. Everyone had odd socks, she said, yet the fact that Elinor
considered herself above everyone else by going to such lengths to ensue she
was not like everyone else pointed to a multiple personality disorder. Elinor
explained they were her favourite socks, a present from her father who had died
two days after giving them to her for her 21st birthday. They were special
socks, to lose one was like losing half her father. Was the sock worth the life
of a man? Elinor didn't know the answer to that question; it was too black and
white. Life wasn't like that. 20,000 children starve to death every day. All of
them could be saved with the food we throw away. But if we wasted less would
the dying children live longer or would the politicians, unable to give without
receiving in return, bury the food and convince us of the necessity of doing
so. That's not the point, said the
psychologist, whose name was
Betty, and came from Massachusetts, social psychology is a different
discipline. Elinor wasn't mad, but she was
ever-so slightly neurotic. She
asked if she felt guilty. She hadn't thought about it. She had seen in the
newspaper a photograph of the hooked man's wife but
she felt sadness not guilt.
Anyone with a fishing line hanging from a balcony could have the same thing
happen to them. An inner voice told her that she had put the line out and was
therefore responsible. But she had only done so because the sock had fallen. If
the sock hadn't fallen ...
Betty said that she should throw the socks
away. Elinor refused. Betty said they had become a fetish. Elinor wavered, then
bought an identical pair and gave them to Betty.
Then she met a man. He was tall,
handsome, intelligent, generous, kind, loving and sympathetic to all of
Elinor's needs. But his feet stank. The aroma
rose from his feet like heat from
a desert. It made Elinor's eyes water and choked her throat. He was not unaware
of his condition. He had tried mustard baths, vinegar baths, salt and rosemary
baths, but still his feet stank. The plants in the house withered, wilted and
died. Elinor's love was sorely tested. He used antibiotics, insecticides,
systemic anti-fungal biological control agents, but still his feet stank. Then
Elinor gave him her special socks, the present from her father. The stench
disappeared. The socks absorbed the smell. Each day, while he ate his tea,
Elinor washed and dried them lovingly and at night they slept in each other's
arms untroubled by sulphurous fumes rising from the end of the bed. They had
children whose feet had an aroma of Arcadian roses. Elinor diligently ensured
they received no influence or even knowledge either of fish, or the
means of its capture. One day the youngest came home from school with a story
about a child who went fishing with a rod and line and when he swung the line
to cast it into the river the hook caught in the beak of a passing swan
twisting the bird's head and breaking its neck. The child said it was the saddest
story she had ever heard. For Elinor it was the parable that spoke of the end
of the beginning of her new life.
