Reading Sherlock Holmes
Summers, I sat on the porch reading Sherlock Holmes while, over the hill, the calves cried out for milk, but I was too in love with that London of fog and hackney cabs, a visitor at the door, the butler announcing her baroque name. Holmes didn’t rise from where he sat by the fire, the tips of his long fingers whitening as they pressed together, like an editor who has never written anything. Watson was busy telling the story. Confused himself, he was considerate enough to keep me in confusion too. In the end of course it was just Arthur Doyle, not yet knighted, sitting at his desk with his shirt unbuttoned to the sternum, wreathed in blue pipe smoke. Having imagined a murder, he was working to solve it. It was sad knowing that once I finished the story, I would never be able to enjoy it again. But I couldn’t stop reading. I had to know, along with Watson and Doyle, what had happened. Only Holmes knew.