Beauty & The Beast

I was discussing books, or rather, I was more listening to the discussion of books, with Count Dracula, Pink Panther and a Koala bear the morning during the recent Roses Carnival in my regular cafe. The bear I met only this morning, friend of the other two who are sort of my friends. People I meet often but chat only when we happen to encounter in the same place at the same time. Naturally they were just in costume for the Carnival. I don't actually have amongst my friends Dracula or a Panther, although it would have been rather interesting. Anyway, when I arrived at the cafe they were already there. As there was no other available table so they invited me to sit with them. Everybody in the entire Roses is, at the Carnival period, in the highest spirits and the jolliest and friendliest mood; you could just sit at anybody's table and be welcome, without having to be asked first. So I sat happily and noted that in fact I had disrupted rather an in depth conversation. They were in the middle of a literary debate re. merits and defects of several authors, none of them I am too familiar with. I have not read too many novels or other literature in Spanish. There are quite a few well known names I know about but whose work I have only read fragments of. So I chose to listen quietly. Count Dracula was telling what one author wrote in his autobiography about an incident he witnessed, something he saw just for a few minutes but could never forget. As I listened to his account, I felt as if my heart was being pierced and I actually sensed the very real, physical pain. I badly wanted to cry. I eventually yielded and did. The 'story' went like this. The author whose name I don't remember now, lives at the edge of a river, in a very quiet village, practically in the midst of the woods. A beautiful, peaceful and idyllic setting for a writer. One day he sat writing by the window overlooking the river, and heard a heart wrenching cry, similar to that of a very young puppy in pain or desperation. Which was exactly what it was when he leaned out of the window to search the source. He saw on the opposite side of the river, just by the edge of the water, a tiny puppy, still blind from birth, abandoned, most likely having been thrown into the water by someone who had misjudged the distance, and the new born pup landed on the edge and crying it's little lung out. He couldn't do anything about it as he was on the wrong side of the river. He was desperate too, busy thinking if he could somehow do something and quickly ... Then, he saw coming out of the woods the figure of a man. To his enormous relief, that man was indeed making his way towards the puppy, and the writer was mumbling to himself "Thank God" when he saw the man picked up the puppy, hardly cast it a glance but immediately raised his arm up a little behind his shoulder, and threw the still whining puppy right into the middle of the river!!! With such brutal force that the frogs stopped croaking due to the sudden impact the pup hitting the water ... Not only every word of the story is now firmly etched in my heart, but the detailed images of the whole episode, as if I was right there too, by the edge of the river but lamentably on the wrong side. I know for sure I will never ever forget this. And I will never understand how horrible and inhuman atrocity we humans are capable of, after more than 3,000 years of something we call civilization. Beauty and the Beast. The beast is in this case is the man! Tags:beauty,puppy,beast

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