My Tolstoy
By Edward T. Keller
As I read my Tolstoy with one eye, I keep my other eye on the flickering TV screen, and my third eye on the rat noses sniffing at the air through the crack of the kitchen door. Above the little noses and whiskers are set black beady eyes, and behind them - nervous ears that move around like tiny radar dishes.
I pretend not to notice the rats as not to encourage them. But then the portrait of Ronald Reagan as a young man fills the TV screen ominously. His broad shoulders seem on the verge of slipping through the plasma and into my room. In a second he could be already twitching on my carpet, covered with pixelated phosphor goo.
The thought is unbearable.
Briefly I think of slapping him with the Tolstoy but that seems somehow unfitting. Instead I get up from the couch, pretending to be looking at my magazines. I roll one up with deceptive slowness and then, fast as striking snake, I turn and swat Reagan on the forehead, spellcasting in my best hillbilly accent: “Git back, git back, you critter!”
He flinches and draws back, looking hurt and puzzled, as if trying to show that he had never intended to invade my privacy. They always pretend they never meant any harm. Damn celebrity stalkers.
“And you too!” I shout at the rats and for them I save the heavier prose - I throw the Tolstoy at the kitchen door. Opening in its flight, pages fluttering like thoughts, the book reaches the door and freezes a foot from its target.
The rats are appropriately impressed, their leader, a fat brown one with gray whiskers, scuttles forward and prostrates himself in front of me.
“That’s better,” I mutter and walk over to the book. It is still suspended in the air and refuses to budge even as I press at it with one hand, then with both hands. Finally I decide to sit cross-legged on it, appearing to be a levitating yoga, meditating a foot above the floor.
Servant rats drag in a dead cat and place it by the lacquered foot of the coffee table. Nasty things. But I know that this is their idea of a gift. I nod with regal absentmindedness and look at the TV. I don’t trust it. The last time I was making out with a girl on the couch, a male penis appeared on the screen and a hand with a wristwatch proceeded to fondle it.
Almost made me lose my concentration, I tell you.
Good thing there’s Tolstoy to keep me up.
- - -
By Edward T. Keller
As I read my Tolstoy with one eye, I keep my other eye on the flickering TV screen, and my third eye on the rat noses sniffing at the air through the crack of the kitchen door. Above the little noses and whiskers are set black beady eyes, and behind them - nervous ears that move around like tiny radar dishes.
I pretend not to notice the rats as not to encourage them. But then the portrait of Ronald Reagan as a young man fills the TV screen ominously. His broad shoulders seem on the verge of slipping through the plasma and into my room. In a second he could be already twitching on my carpet, covered with pixelated phosphor goo.
The thought is unbearable.
Briefly I think of slapping him with the Tolstoy but that seems somehow unfitting. Instead I get up from the couch, pretending to be looking at my magazines. I roll one up with deceptive slowness and then, fast as striking snake, I turn and swat Reagan on the forehead, spellcasting in my best hillbilly accent: “Git back, git back, you critter!”
He flinches and draws back, looking hurt and puzzled, as if trying to show that he had never intended to invade my privacy. They always pretend they never meant any harm. Damn celebrity stalkers.
“And you too!” I shout at the rats and for them I save the heavier prose - I throw the Tolstoy at the kitchen door. Opening in its flight, pages fluttering like thoughts, the book reaches the door and freezes a foot from its target.
The rats are appropriately impressed, their leader, a fat brown one with gray whiskers, scuttles forward and prostrates himself in front of me.
“That’s better,” I mutter and walk over to the book. It is still suspended in the air and refuses to budge even as I press at it with one hand, then with both hands. Finally I decide to sit cross-legged on it, appearing to be a levitating yoga, meditating a foot above the floor.
Servant rats drag in a dead cat and place it by the lacquered foot of the coffee table. Nasty things. But I know that this is their idea of a gift. I nod with regal absentmindedness and look at the TV. I don’t trust it. The last time I was making out with a girl on the couch, a male penis appeared on the screen and a hand with a wristwatch proceeded to fondle it.
Almost made me lose my concentration, I tell you.
Good thing there’s Tolstoy to keep me up.
- - -
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