Evanston: the beast in man
Evanston: the beast in man
I did walk to downtown Evanston this morning and brought back a bottle of Laphroaig and one of champagne. Carol and I will celebrate an early Christmas on Friday before flying to North Carolina to spend the holiday with her family. I don’t know that anyone will believe me, but I walked in as much for the walk as the Laphroaig. The champagne was spur of the moment.
If you’ve been around here for a while, you know that I like using my aged body. The Laphroaig provided a destination. Unfortunately that liquor store has recently changed hands and the new owner continues to raise prices. 10 Year now costs $60 a bottle there, $13 more than at my preferred store; and $25 a bottle more than online. I am contemplating a move to Florida.
The temperature was about freezing.
Those of you wise enough to live in places with decent climates might find that intolerable; but the unfortunate rest of us know that freezing is not cold if you are properly dressed. I was moving at a pretty good pace and was almost too warm in my winter parka. Only the exposed parts of my face were cool. My right eye watered more than it used to.
I was gone an hour and walked about as far as Opua to Pahia. No where near as scenic and, of course, completely flat. I miss New Zealand’s hills and the views of the bay and the scent of fern forest.
In partial compensation, a few flakes of snow were falling, and with tree limbs bare, I could look up and see abandoned bird nests. Along one block there was even a flock of small dark birds. I had a camera, but when I tried to get a shot of them sitting like ornaments on a tree found the battery dead. I have spares and should have checked before I left.
I passed two of my favorite Evanston houses. They are almost directly across from one another. I like one not for the house but the yard, which is a prairie not a lawn. Original, interesting, attractive, and probably low maintenance. Native plants are hardy.
The other house is perfectly proportioned, two story, painted white with black trim and a red front door. The door makes it, and was the only spot of color in a gray world and sky.
In a narrow triangle in downtown Evanston stand brick columns with plaques listing war dead. I’ve often passed and today, perhaps because of last Friday’s events in Connecticut and perhaps because I just finished Emile Zola’s THE BEAST IN MAN, I stopped.
There were only six for the Civil War. I don’t expect many people lived in Evanston then.
About the same for the Spanish American War.
Twenty or thirty for the First World War.
For the Second World War I had to bend my head back and look up at least twenty feet to see the top, and names ran on two sides of the column.
Korea and Viet Nam were represented.
Nothing yet for Iraq and Afghanistan.
The beast of Zola’s title is the, perhaps atavistic, animal urge to kill. Zola was after Darwin and before Freud.
The novel is one of my favorites of his and he is one of my favorite authors. It could have been a potboiler, but Zola was too good a writer.
There are multiple murders by multiple murderers: for revenge, money, sex, ‘blood lust’--if there is such a thing, insanity. There is a suicide and two more unintentional deaths during a fight. There are coverups and false accusations. And a closing image as dramatic as any in literature. All tied together by the railroad line running between Le Havre and Paris. In Zola’s time the railroad was the greatest symbol of industrial power.
I had started THE BEAST IN MAN before last Friday.
This morning I read some of the names of the Evanston war dead. I might have been the only one today who did read those names, and, as when I read the names off a similar memorial in Tahiti long ago, I’ve already forgotten them.
Then I turned and walked home.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012