Chapter 12

You watch the old man eat: you yourself have not eaten with such pleasure since childhood! Anna looks at Omar in admiration: an appetite like that is the best compliment to the cook! And indeed, the table really is splendid. On your plate lies red meat as tender as a woman’s lips in a kiss, accompanied by soybean sprouts, in short -- ah. Only you, unlike Omar, are in no hurry; you stretch out the pleasure.

“I don’t understand how you can eat meat. They’re corpses of once-living creatures,” Anna says with a grimace.

She cooks meat only for you.

“It’s our nature,” you shrug. “I didn’t invent the laws of the world. Life is a struggle -- a struggle for usable energy. Grass absorbs solar energy and draws nutrients from the soil through water: it builds itself. A rabbit eats the grass, a wolf eats the rabbit. Everyone eats everyone.”

The old immigrant knocks back a shot while Annette chokes a little on hot sweet tea.

“And what do you think about vegetarianism, Omar?” your wife asks.

Now, with your wife and her lover sitting beside each other, images of them having sex flash through your mind, tormenting you. Images of unthinkably animal, base acts of mating. Yielding to impulse, you take the moonshine and pour some into your glass! You drink it in one gulp! Pour more. Annette looks at you questioningly, but says nothing. It is a holiday, after all. Omar smirks.