Quote:
Originally Posted by pitsword
Have any of you ever spent time with lobsters, you know, while the pot is coming to a boil? Been doing this for 60+ years and never thought of anything other than eating them.. However as I type on this Christmas day, I gotta wonder what those critters are trying to tell me. Haa I think it is that the pot is boiling on the grill and it is time to go. You know, me to say Merry Christmas and for them to ...you know..GO.
|
His aunt was in the garden, tending whatever flowers die at that time of year. She embraced him and together they went down into the bowels of the earth, into the kitchen in the basement. She took the parcel and undid it and abruptly the lobster was on the table, on the oilcloth, discovered.
“They assured me it was fresh” said Belacqua.
Suddenly he saw the creature move, this neuter creature. Definitely it changed its position. His hand flew to his mouth.
“Christ!” he said “it's alive.”
His aunt looked at the lobster. It moved again. It made a faint nervous act of life on the oilcloth. They stood above it, looking down on it, exposed cruciform on the oilcloth. It shuddered again. Belacqua felt he would be sick.
“My God” he whined “it's alive, what'll we do?” The aunt simply had to laugh. She bustled off to the pantry to fetch her smart apron, leaving him goggling down at the lobster, and came back with it on and her sleeves rolled up, all business.
“Well” she said “it is to be hoped so, indeed.”
“All this time” muttered Belacqua. Then, suddenly aware of her hideous equipment: “What are you going to do?” he cried.
“Boil the beast” she said, “what else?”
“But it's not dead” protested Belacqua “you can't boil it like that.”
She looked at him in astonishment. Had he taken leave of his senses?
“Have sense” she said sharply, “lobsters are always boiled alive. They must be.” She caught up the lobster and laid it on its back. It trembled. “They feel nothing” she said.
In the depths of the sea it had crept into the cruel pot. For hours, in the midst of its enemies, it had breathed secretly. It had survived the Frenchwoman's cat and his witless clutch. Now it was going alive into scalding water. It had to. Take into the air my quiet breath.
Belacqua looked at the old parchment of her face, grey in the dim kitchen.
“You make a fuss” she said angrily “and upset me and then lash into it for your dinner.”
She lifted the lobster clear of the table. It had about thirty seconds to live.
Well, thought Belacqua, it's a quick death, God help us all.
It is not.
--Samuel Beckett, “
Dante and the Lobster”, 1934