Other Voices, Other Rooms

by Truman Capote

Towards twelve they dismounted, and spread their picnic under a tree. Randolph had brought along a fruit-jar of scuppernong wine; he gargled it like mouthwash, and when there was no more, Joel made use of the empty jar to trap ants : The Pious Insect, Randolph called them, and said: ‘They fill me with oh so much admiration and ah so much gloom : such puritan spirit in their mindless march of Godly industry, but can so anti-individual a government admit the poetry of what is past understanding? Certainly the man who refused to carry his crumb would find assassins on his trail, and doom in every smile. As for me, I prefer the solitary mole: he is no rose dependent upon thorn and root, nor ant whose time of being is organized by the unalterable herd : sightless, he goes his separate way, knowing truth and freedom are attitudes of the spirit.’ He smoothed his hair, and laughed: at himself, it seemed. ‘ If 1 were as wise as the mole, if 1 were free and equal, then what an admirable whorehouse I should be the Madame of; more likely, though, I would end up just Mrs Nobody in Particular, a dumpy corsctlcss creature with a brickhead husband and stepladder brats and a pot of stew on the stove.’