The Explosion in the Parlor
The host poured tea into the cup and placed it on the small table in front of his guests, who were a father and daughter, and put the lid on the cup with a clink. Apparently thinking of something, he hurried into the inner room, leaving the thermos on the table. His two guests heard a chest of drawers opening and a rustling.
They remained n the parlor, the ten-year-old daughter looking at the flowers outside the window, the father just about to take his cup, when the crash came, right there in the parlor. Something was hopelessly broken.
It was the thermos, which had fallen to the floor. The girl looked over her shoulder abruptly, startled, staring. It was mysterious. Neither of them had touched it, not even a little bit. True, it hadn’t stood steadily when their host placed it on the table, but it hadn’t fallen then.
The crash of the thermos caused the host, with a box of sugar cubes in his hand, to rush back from the inner room. He gawked at the steaming floor and blurted out, “It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter!”
The father started to say something. Then he muttered, “Sorry, Itouched it and it fell.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the host said.
Later, when they left the house, the daughter said, “Daddy, did you touch it?”
“No. but it stood so close to me.”
“But you didn’t touch it. I saw your reflection in the windowpane. You were sitting perfectly still.”
The father laughed. “What then would you give as the cause of its fall?”
“The thermos fell by itself. The floor is uneven. It wasn’t steady when Mr. Li put it there. Daddy, why did you say that you…”
“That won’t do, girl. It sounds more acceptable when I say I knocked it down. There are things which people accept less the more you defend them. The truer the story you tell, the less true it sounds.”
The daughter was lost in silence for a while. Then she said, “Can you explain it only this way?”
“Only this way,” her father said.
