Hugh and Leslie left early this morning for Paris. I was supposed to go with them but decided at the last minute that it’s really not a good time for me. I can’t leave my spiders, for one. On Saturday I started feeding Clifton, who lives above the kitchen sink. He’s big, the size of a pearl, and I’m trying to make him bigger. Yesterday he ate two flies and a moth. The flies took him about three hours each, and the moth, I have no idea. He was still working on it when I went to bed. This morning it’s hollow, propped like a scarecrow on the edge of the web. “Good work, Clifton,” I said.
I love the moment when he feels the prey trying to escape. Their wings vibrate the web and he comes from his little cave to size them up. The other day I threw in a bee. Clifton ran out, saw what he had, and hightailed it back to the corner as if to say, Goddamn, I can’t eat that. Don’t you know anything?
With moths and flies it’s a different story. He attacks directly, paralyzing them with a bite to the back or stomach or forehead. Once they’re unable to move, he drinks them alive, empties them out, and throws the bodies into the trash. I started feeding Clifton on Saturday and began feeding Coretta Scott yesterday afternoon. The flies are easy to catch, especially the old, clumsy ones. During the day they bat against the windows and at night they can be found sleeping on the ceiling. I felt a little guilty about the moth, but flies, who cares?
July 9, 2002
La Bagotière
All day yesterday Clifton stayed folded in his chamber, suffering, I guessed, from a stomachache. He’d eaten three things larger than himself and so, figuring he’d had enough for a while, I concentrated on Coretta Scott and Jerry, a new spider nesting in the window between the stove and the bathroom. It was a slow day for flies, but I managed to catch three of them. Last night I noticed a new colony of spiders on the living-room ceiling. Their webs are complex and sprawling, resembling the new art museum in Milwaukee. There were four of them, and at around midnight they started going crazy, leaping around for no reason. There was a lamp on the table beneath them and the light cast their shadows huge upon the ceiling. I caught each of them a moth and then went to check on Clifton, who was gone. His web is empty except for carcasses, and I’m wondering if he went off to mate.
July 11, 2002
La Bagotière
Hugh returned from Paris and I was delighted to see him. It’s scary here alone at night, frightening the way it was when I was a child. In the first place, the house is crawling with creatures—insects, rodents. There’s probably a snake curled up here somewhere. Then there’s the world outside desperately trying to get in. Lie in bed alone and you can hear animals in the yard—something’s outside the bedroom door, something’s overturning a trash can. Before going to bed on Tuesday night, I made the mistake of reading. It’s the memoir of a forensic pathologist, so on top of everything else, I thought of skeletal remains and the way coffin lining sometimes fuses to the bone. It occurred to me that I’d maybe left the door of the milking chamber unlocked, but I was too frightened to get out of bed and check. All in all, it was a terrible night’s sleep.
My fingertips are haunted by the feel of struggling flies. It’s like holding a living, determined raisin. Coretta Scott’s web has gotten ragged and fragile. Prey no longer sticks. I keep thinking she’ll take up repairs or maybe spin herself a new home, but no. Jerry, the spider in the window, is suffering a similar fate. I threw in a fly and it struggled free. I threw it in again and again, eventually knocking it unconscious. Then I thought, What am I doing? When it revived, I threw the fly to the new, enormous spider on the living-room ceiling. He attacked immediately, no hesitation whatsoever, and I felt as though I were rooting for the Nazis in a Holocaust movie. It’s easier with Hugh around, but when left alone I feel I might be losing my mind. Let me catch just one more fly, I think. Just one more!
July 14, 2002
La Bagotière
A brown bird built a nest in the flower box outside Granny G.’s bedroom. She invited me up to see the chicks, three tiny creatures resembling baby dinosaurs. They were asleep so she prodded them with a sharp stick. “Here,” she said, “watch them move.” I’m planning to go over this afternoon with some grubs and a set of tweezers.
Two of my newer spiders have died, but Coretta Scott just keeps on going. Her web is a mess of paint chips and mosquito parts, yet she refuses to move. I’ve been feeding her for a week but can’t see that she’s gotten any bigger. I’d kill for a good book about spiders.
July 18, 2002
La Bagotière
Yesterday afternoon Paula, the big female Tegenaria in my office, took down a bumblebee, which fought briefly, realized the situation was futile, and surrendered. I’d caught it earlier in the garden and afterward felt terrible. A wasp is one thing, but bumblebees don’t hurt anyone. Like ladybugs, they’re all about love. After Paula killed it, I looked in the mirror, expecting to see a monster staring back at me. I mean, I really felt changed, ashamed of myself for catching this thing and throwing it into her web. “This is it,” I told myself. “No more feeding the spiders.” Then I rode my bike to Flers, bought a magnifying glass and a book about insects, and came home to feed the spiders.
July 22, 2002
La Bagotière
This is just about the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen: Yesterday afternoon I threw Paula an exceptionally large fly I’d caught in the kitchen. She took it into her cave and a few hours later I noticed her standing in the middle of her web, surrounded by maggots. I’m not sure quite how this happened, as they emerge from eggs, not live from the mother, whose dead body was now crawling with them. Maybe she’d been looking for a place to lay them and they’d hatched a little sooner than she thought? When she’d finished with the fly, Paula started in on the maggots, not eating them but carrying them to the edge of the web and tossing them onto the floor. It was a nasty job and after a while she gave up.
I took a nap and when I returned, the web was covered with ants, who carried the maggots past Paula’s cave and through a crack in the door. It was as if they were servants she had hired to clean up after a party. Manuela was here, and late in the afternoon Genevieve stopped by. The Gs invited us over for aperitifs, and while the others discussed this and that, I thought of the web full of maggots. It was like a terrible secret that set me apart from normal happy people who could eat peanuts and make jokes. I thought about them some more on the way to the train station and by the time Manuela left, I was sick to my stomach.
July 24, 2002
La Bagotière
While I was at the roundabout in Flers, a child approached me and asked for a cigarette. He was maybe eight. “It’s for my mother,” he said. I asked where his mom was and he gestured behind himself. “At home.”
Later, riding to La Lande-Saint-Siméon, I passed a swastika spray-painted onto the road.