They are extremely small. I hadn’t thought people came that little. I can’t help but think of them as “wee people,” even though that conjures up images of leprechauns and such, which they don’t at all resemble. If anything they resemble tiny bankers. That’s because of the little pinstripes and the black umbrellas they all seem to carry with them even when there is no threat of rain. “Wee British bankers” I think pretty well sums them up. Sums up their appearance, I mean, because they certainly don’t act like bankers. Several months ago, for example, I came into the kitchen and found one of them standing on the counter next to the blender. The instant it caught sight of me it jumped to the floor, using its umbrella as a parachute. It shot right past me and a moment later I heard the front door slam. That was the first time I had found one in the house.
Silvia says they breed in the compost. I don’t think so. She says that because she is angry about the second composter. “You and your rotting vegetables,” she says, standing on the deck and pointing at my composters lined up next to the garage. “Is this a trailer park?” Of course she knows it’s not a trailer park. An overreliance on the counterfactual interrogative—“Are you an idiot?” “Is that your underwear in the bathroom?”—is one of Silvia’s tics. Composting, of course, has nothing to do with rotting, it is the work of thoroughly benign microorganisms, but when I try to explain that to her she just walks off or, if we are sitting, sticks her fingers in her ears. I don’t think Silvia is aware of how annoying that is.
In addition to bacteria, I try to tell her, you need nitrogen, oxygen, water, and the right mix of protozoa, rotifers, molds, and of course earthworms; you have to have earthworms. You don’t add them. They come on their own. Aristotle thought that all animals were born of other similar animals, except for flies, which he thought hatched spontaneously from dirt. Aristotle was not a composter or he would have believed the same of earthworms. The most rudimentary compost pile, left to itself for a few summer days, will slither with them. They just pop up. It’s like a miracle, I tell Silvia. Now that I think about it, that must be what gave her the idea that little people can arrive in that way.
Silvia is not a gardener, to say the least. She won’t even eat most of the things I grow. Of course eating them is not the point. I like being outside. Even when there’s nothing to do in the garden, I prefer being there to sitting in the house listening to Silvia’s friends. Sometimes I sit in the garage. I was in the garage when I heard the little people for the first time, heard their vocalizations, I mean; I can’t say they were actually talking. I peeked out the window. A pair of little ones—small even by their standards—were standing beneath a tomato plant in the garden. They seemed to be bickering. There was a rapid exchange of high-pitched squeals accompanied by threatening gestures with the umbrellas. Though I can’t say for certain that they were talking, the shrill vibrato chittering was exactly the way one would expect a very tiny language to sound—not just small in volume but composed of very tiny words. Sometimes when Silvia has her friends over and they are in the dining room all talking at once, I find myself listening away, so to speak, hearing the sounds but blocking out their meaning, and it was exactly like that—a shrill feminine chatter that, when listened to in that way, sounds exactly like squealing.
Silvia enjoys making heavy-handed sarcastic remarks about me and my “little friends,” as she calls them. I usually manage to shrug those off, as I did just the other night. We had been watching the news on TV, when she abruptly leaned over and said in my ear, “Another politician in a sex scandal. What do your little friends think of that?” As if they could be bothered! I told her I doubted they would even know about it. I don’t think they have newspapers.
There seem to be more and more of them. I know it sounds odd to speak of things that small as massing, but that is just what they appear to be doing. I saw them in ones and twos at first, usually in the garden, but lately I’ve noticed them in larger groups in the street out front. They seem to be talking about us, pointing the wickedly sharp tips of their little umbrellas at our house. I tried discussing this with Silvia, but she just walked off.
She is upset over the missing money, even storming outside to shout at me, leaning over the deck rail and yelling down at me while I am bent over in the garden weeding. I don’t even look up when she does that. She is always losing money and then blaming other people. When I suggested that maybe the little people took it, she flew into a rage, screaming, “There are no little people.” Which was a stupid thing to say.
Silvia has always earned more than me. Furthermore, she likes her job. I hated my job, could scarcely drag myself to work in the morning, and when the headaches started I would either have to go home or lock the door to my office and lie down on the floor. I liked getting home early and having the house to myself. So when I lost my position, I thought, why bother. Silvia was earning plenty for both of us. I thought I would do something creative, though I haven’t settled on anything yet, except gardening. Silvia says she doesn’t understand how I can sit around doing nothing. A remark like that tells you a lot about Silvia.
I don’t know where they would keep the money if they took it. The pockets in their little suits would hold a few postage stamps at best, or a couple of dimes. But still they do have pockets and must use them for something. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they had their own tiny currency.
Silvia won’t let it go, complaining, squealing, and now threatening to take steps. Bluster, probably, but I’ve begun taking photos of them, just in case. And they seem to enjoy that, putting on poses and doing tricks with the umbrellas, as if they want to appear in the very best light, as well they should.
Last week I found out that she had been putting down rat poison. I said to her, “Do you realize what you’ve done? They’re not mice! They don’t even look like mice.” The minute she left for work, I went around the house and gathered up all the pellets I could find. I did the best I could, but I fear I was too late. I think they know.
Four nights ago we found a length of heavy twine stretched across the stairs, obviously calculated to send Silvia plunging down. She saw it just in time. Of course she was thoroughly shaken. She went into the bathroom and locked the door. I think I heard a sob.
I am worried about the bankers. Yesterday I saw several of them at the kitchen window looking out at me while I was weeding. Since I began sleeping in the tent, I’ve seen nothing of Silvia. I’ve heard the phone ringing. It rings a long time, stops, and then begins to ring again. There are no lights on in the house. It’s possible that she has gone off somewhere, some place where she can rest, but I don’t think so. When the police come, I’ll show them the photographs.