kill it one day. But so far it had been an empty threat. Sophie took a lettuce leaf from
a large jam jar and laid it in the box.
“Dear Govinda,” she said. “You are not one of the speediest animals, but you
certainly are able to sense a tiny fraction of the great big world we live in. You’ll have
to content yourself with the fact that you are not the only one who can’t exceed your
own limits.”
Sherekan was probably out catching mice—that was a cat’s nature, after all.
Sophie crossed the living room toward her mother’s bedroom. A vase of daffodils
stood on the coffee table. It was as if the yellow blooms bowed respectfully as Sophie
went by. She stopped for a moment and let her fingers gently brush their smooth
heads. “You belong to the living part of nature too,” she said. “Actually, you are quite
privileged compared to the vase you are in. But unfortunately you are not able to
appreciate it.”
Then Sophie tiptoed into her mother’s bedroom. Although her mother was in a
deep sleep, Sophie laid a hand on her forehead.
“You are one of the luckiest ones,” she said, “because you are not only alive
like the lilies of the field. And you are not only a living creature like Sherekan or
Govinda. You are a human, and therefore have the rare capacity of thought.”
“What on earth are you talking about, Sophie?”
Her mother had woken up more quickly than usual.
“I was just saying that you look like a lazy tortoise. I can otherwise inform you
that I have tidied up my room, with philosophic thoroughness.”
Her mother lifted her head.
“I’ll be right there,” she said. “Will you put the coffee on?”
Sophie did as she was asked, and they were soon sitting in the kitchen over
coffee, juice, and chocolate.
Suddenly Sophie said, “Have you ever wondered why we are alive, Mom?”
“Oh, not again!”
“Yes, because now I know the answer. People live on this planet so that
someone can go around giving names to everything.”
“Is that right? I never thought of that.”
“Then you have a big problem, because a human is a thinking animal. If you
don’t think, you’re not really a human.”
“Sophie!”
“Imagine if there were only vegetables and animals. Then there wouldn’t have
been anybody to tell the difference between ‘cat’ and ‘dog,’ or ‘lily’ and ‘gooseberry.’
Vegetables and animals are living too, but we are the only creatures that can
categorize nature into different groups and classes.”
“You really are the most peculiar girl I have ever had,” said her mother.
“I should hope so,” said Sophie. “Everybody is more or less peculiar. I am a
person, so I am more or less peculiar. You have only one girl, so I am the most pe-
culiar.”
“What I meant was that you scare the living daylights out of me with all that
new talk.”
“You are easily scared, then.”
Later that afternoon Sophie went back to the den. She managed to smuggle the
big cookie tin up to her room without her mother noticing.
First she put all the pages in the right order. Then she punched holes in them
and put them in the ring binder, before the chapter on Aristotle. Finally she numbered
each page in the top right-hand corner. There were in all over fifty pages. Sophie was