Chapter 48

Over the winter I’ve gradually started exposing Hugo to city culture. He’s used to TV and radio by now, but he isn’t a big fan of either. So I thought, why not take him out for some field trips?

Our first venture was the big natural history museum. The dinosaur part was a huge hit; he’d never seen anything like it, and the size of the skeletons and recreations awed him. So did the age when I told him how long ago they lived. He’d thought his time jump was a big one, and of course it was, but he found millions of years to be incomprehensible.

When we got to the prehistoric man section, which I thought he’d find even more fascinating, he was just ... bemused. He admired some of the flint work, but most of the rest only puzzled him. They had a big display showing a few beetle-browed mannequins clustered around a fire inside a cave, and all he could do was shake his head.

“People believe this is true?” he asked me incredulously. “People believe this is how men and women lived?”

I hushed him while we were there, too many people in hearing distance, but when were back in the car he went on and on about it, how bad a representation it was.

“Do people think men were stupid only because they lived thousands of years ago?” he asked me. “Stupid people will not live then, not long. One must have all things, good mind, strong body, all, to survive. I am a man of that time, am I stupid?”

No, quite the opposite, I assured him. Very much the opposite.

“It is ... arrogance,” he said. His command of English grows by leaps and bounds, he’s even picked up a little vernacular. “We had none of the technology, that’s true, but we had more basic intelligence, more ... smarts than most of those I’ve met here. We had to, being stupid got one killed very quickly.”

Well, cross that one off the list for re-visits.

Our next venture also wasn’t a rousing success. I took him to a live stage play. I guess I should have known better, he won’t watch movies and dramatizations on TV, but I thought live action might work better for him. He sat through it dutifully, but I could tell he wasn’t enjoying it much and on the way home I realized why.

“It’s like the people that you and Irving bring me to,” he said. “Your clients, the witnesses, the ones who lie. The ones we saw meant none of the words they spoke, none of the things they did, they only pretended and it was very obvious. I think acting is not something that I can enjoy greatly.”

Oops.

On the third try we hit pay dirt, though. I’m not a big music fan and mostly my taste is pretty pedestrian—a little pops, a little rock, easy listening in the background, like that. Hugo will tolerate it, though sometimes he makes a face at me when I put the car radio on to a hard rock or a country station. So I thought I’d try him on a symphony orchestra.

He was mesmerized! When they did some Strauss waltzes for encores he even started swaying slightly to the music right there in his seat. And he clapped so hard after everything that his hands got sore; I saw him shaking them after one round of applause.

“I have never heard such beautiful sound,” he told me afterwards. “If this modern world can have this, then it goes far to make up for all the evil things I’ve seen.”

His enthusiasm was contagious, too; after a while I found myself enjoying the concert right along with him. This one’s definitely a do-over.

The art gallery worked out pretty well, too. He was a little underwhelmed by some of the abstracts, but the representational stuff got his attention big-time. So, to my surprise, did the impressionists; he stood so long gazing at one Monet that I thought he’d take root. We’ll go back there, too.

Driving around sight-seeing has been kind of in and out. His taste in architecture, which is most of what there is to see, runs toward the functional—simple lines, minimal ornamentation, like that. He’ll go for a clean office building over a rococo church any day. In pictures he admires the pyramids, Stonehenge, the Taj Mahal, and turns up his nose at Notre Dame Cathedral.

We’ve also been doing other, more mundane things. Like opening him a bank account. The firm’s taking a significant piece out of both our earnings to cover the note on the house, but they’re not being pushy about it and even with taxes and all we can go on my salary for now. So I told him to take his own and keep it. When I explained about interest he was happy to deposit his checks.

He’s learned to drive, too, though he hates it. He’s OK on the open road, but traffic scares the shit out of him. When Irving calls him into court or the office he wants me to drive, and we’ve made that a habit. Actually it gets me into the more interesting cases, since I’m there anyway, so I kind of like it.