finishing things

In the end, it was as his old neighbor Lucio was always telling him: Lucio, who had lost his arm in the Spanish Civil War. The problem, Lucio would explain, wasn’t so much the missing arm as that when it happened he had a spider bite on it which he hadn’t finished scratching. And seventy years later, Lucio was still scratching away at the empty space. Something that isn’t finished with properly will irritate you forever.

drawing by lynn

drawing by lynn

I am very fond of the detective stories by the French anthropologist Fred Vargas. I enjoy her characters and the tone of her writing. This quote is from the latest one out in English, The Ghost Riders of Orderbec (Penguin paperback 2013).