Today when I am dusting I find a dead grasshopper on the
windowsill. He is still perfectly green and even in death his face looks full of intellect and interest. He does not have that frowning fierceness
that the praying mantis has – all hard angles and the eyes of a maniac. No this
sweet fellow has the face of a country vicar - all humility and gentleness and through carelessness I have
killed him. I wonder if the Buddha of household
things sees this misadventure and I leave dusting him till later - still suddenly my
karma seems too heavy to carry on with. I think on all the accidental deaths, on all the lives cut short through some failure of attention or care. Better the grasshopper had died in the beak of a bird, I think, more violent but a death with purpose. The thing is I had seen this small
fellow come in a few days ago. The screen door was open, the afternoon sun was
coming in at a slant and this perfectly jointed green creature came in too. He
settled on the architrave beside the door and I got up from my desk to admire
him. His sweet face looked somehow familiar and put me in mind of the
grasshopper in Aesop’s fables. I’m not sure what edition I had as a child – it
was a book that had belonged to my mother – a hardback, the pages roughly cut
and the coloured plates interleaved with tissue. I remember that the
grasshopper had spent the summer singing while the ants worked. I think in the
illustration he carried a small violin while the ants shouldered a giant stalk
of wheat…the text was spare, hardly a story really. Labour and frugality was
rewarded and idleness condemned. How much more eloquent the picture was and how
surprised I was that singing could be punished. I liked to sing.
A day later when I noticed the grasshopper again he was clinging to the cornice. I
wondered at his ability to walk upside down and went back to work. I had spent
the morning bottling quinces, now I was at the sewing machine stitching
straight rows and unable stop – I admired his acrobat instincts in an abstract sort of way, not
thinking he might be in peril – I was being an ant – I hadn't stopped to wonder that he was still in the house, did not even think to open a window
for him. Perhaps he was drowning not waving. Perhaps he was not singing but
calling for help. I looked without seeing the obvious, heard without listening something I am too often guilty of
- and that is how I came to find him a week later, laid on his side as though
in sleep, unmoving on the windowsill.
