Without fearing anything or anyone, a snail bursts into the garden table, in the middle of dinner. We didn’t notice it coming, so mysterious. His tenacious step enlivens the talk, with that unbearable slowness. Although exciting. We diners stare at him. It is a mollusk with very lively antennae that drags an ocher shell, cut with a very fine spiral.
As is logical, the vision of his natural home leads us to comment on the human problem of housing and the beastly rise in interest rates. Then someone adds that these hermaphrodites exchange eggs and sperm in an intense copulation that can last seven hours. We look at each other.
About the time it will have taken to get here, no idea. It could be that it came from the fence, avoiding a high risk of death by being trampled, and that it then climbed up a table leg, just like drool. Where does he want to go with such force and this sense of rhythm that explodes in our heads? Poor naive, we could eat him at this table of stealthy predators right now. But its slowness is leading us to the abyss. The perfection of its spiral, too. Suddenly, just like that, under the stars, there are beings that suck your soul. And the napkin. One of the paper he found on his way, and it seems to be overflowing.
The spirit of the dinner is his: the strangeness of the perception of time falls on our heads and, naturally, the conversation turns to the passage of years, life nostalgia, things like that. This snail is our Proust cupcake, more or less. But it seems stuck on the napkin, and someone comments that there comes a time in life when you have to start accepting limitations. Assume that there are things you will no longer do. Youthful wishes that have expired.
Nor should it be taken the wrong way. There are plenty of mature people, for example, who would be happier accepting that they will never speak English fluently. Not interspersed.
Another thing is that of this diner, an administration employee, who, it seems, has always wanted to be a highly competitive figure skater. Well, at my age, I still have to accept that I will never win the gold medal in figure skating again – he said with real sadness –
The screw sticking with the napkin is starting to be a concern. In love with him, he does not advance. We diners are divided between those who believe he has the resources to get rid of it and the interventionists who believe he is being drained by an uncontrolled cellulose suction effect. It comes to be questioned that he knows how to get off the table alone. please
The proposal to move it to a geranium is not accepted, for fear of disorienting it forever. Snails do not know the plane, and our hostess does not want a mollusk that has drunk the understanding in her garden. There is consensus in removing the napkin but leaving it on the table, so that it can go wherever it pleases in its slow life. Dinner runs its course, and so does the drooling mark of the snail’s desire.
