SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 118
SINE QUA NON
“What is it that they are saying?” I asked, with an immediate urgency to know.
“Ah, my dear, I’ve been trying to translate it for decades. But the words are never the
same. They change every time. The storm changes, the frogs sound different, or the birds.
Sometimes together with the jaguar, you can hear howler monkeys, too.”
Pale and breathless, I could only say:
“This is why you never let this box out of your sight.”
“Yes. And I never turned it in. What would academia have made of this? What would
have become of my career?” she sighed, and lay against the cushions behind her back for a
moment. “I guess if I’d known the elements found in the Indian Grotto would never see the
light in a public display, I’d have given them in, without explaining anything. But would you
have given them away?”
I looked down at the rug in red and blues, then at the small box that held all of the
jungle and its true people in a few centimetres in a way no photograph could ever do.
I shook my head, and simply said “No.”
There was a second in which we exchanged glances and I could swear there was a shared
emotion that dissolved with the sound of car horns and an early firecracker.
Nina placed the box carefully back on its piano shrine, and said:
“What will you do with the interview? I guess we didn’t stick to it as we should have…”
“Don’t worry Miss Nina,” I blurted, “I’ll fill in the details with info from your academic
papers. That’ll serve”
She smiled a crooked smile, perhaps thinking of what academic papers do to people.
The rest of the meeting played on politeness and respect. I’d even say mutual respect.
Nina Rizzo died two years after I interviewed her. I couldn’t attend her distant funeral,
though I would have wanted to, but I was going through a lot of studying made hard by a
break-up.
Ever since I’ve wondered who, if any, kept Professor Rizzo’s cardboard box, considering
she had no relatives. Sometimes I wake up and think that it may have gone to the trash if the
building attendant was the one emptying her spinster’s flat. At other times I fantasize any of
her dedicated students was into the secret, like me, and slipped into her flat to recover the
box, unnoticed. Perhaps she also took the dog coffee cups with her. I would have.
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