She was 34, on a trip to Europe, got sick from a flu or maybe it was a virus, had to lie down and stay in bed — for months and months. A friend brought her a snail. You might enjoy its company, she was told.
"Why, I wondered, would I enjoy a snail?," Elisabeth Tova Bailey asks in her book The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating. "What on earth would I do with it?"
The snail stayed. It was placed in a little glass bowl on her night table, where, for a while, it ... well, Elisabeth had no idea what it was doing. Snails are nocturnal. Whatever they do, they usually do it in the dark.
But then, one very quiet night ..
1 comment:
Oh, Slavenka, this is such a lovely post. I will look for the book.
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