[He looks him in the eye intently for two whole minutes of silence.]
Of the odd socks that you wore to your brother’s wedding, blue on the left foot, red on the right, which was the odd one, the red or the blue? And how do you know? Is it related to your intention, the blue being odd if you intended to wear red, the red if you intended to wear blue? Then what if you intended nothing in particular, neither red, blue nor any other colour, does that annihilate the oddness of the odd socks? And what if it were the case that you had intended to wear black socks, one for each foot, then are both your socks guilty of being odd, the blue one and the red, both guilty, both at fault, this discrepancy with the ideal being apparent to both your brother and his wife, not to mention all the guests, as you deliver your best man’s speech, the content of which now flies over their heads and is dispersed by the wind? Can anyone sensible blame such a beautiful and cultivated young woman (she plays piano well and speaks French and Italian perfectly) as your brother’s
new wife for wondering what sort of family this is that she has married into, a family that is probably genetically flawed if it can produce a member (yourself) who not only wears odd socks to an important occasion – in this case, the most important occasion: her wedding – but has no sense whatsoever that a fault has been committed, indeed almost a crime against the future? Is that the sort of thing you think ‘goes without saying’ in these days of ours? That a young woman – beautiful, educated, liberated and modern – should have to endure such a person as her husband’s brother, so careless that it is neither here nor there to him whether he turns up to his brother’s wedding in unmatched socks – blue on the left foot, red on the right – a lack of consideration so inconsiderate that we may as well be back in the twelfth century, an age in which young women’s feelings about such matters counted for nothing? Or are you one of those harmless fellows who put on different-coloured socks merely as a
fashion statement, what with the young being in eternal rebellion against their elders and betters, a demonstration of the march of history (so you and your friends think), the present a great brush that sweeps the past aside in preparation for the advent of the future, with the oddness (of the socks and of reality in general) soon becoming so regular, indeed conventional, that it touches on the great dullness inside us?
[Smiles and then frowns.]
Has it ever entered your mind what it must be like to be a worm at dawn, that that worm has a bit more to think about than the beauty of the dawn chorus that pipes up with the rising sun to delight and bewitch the ear of man and angel alike? Have you ever considered, at any moment in your life, what that worm, with his head (if indeed a worm has such a thing as a head) only just poking out of the soil, must endure on this lovely tuneful morning, what with those hundred pairs of eyes belonging to the
