An Abundance of Beatrices

When we lived in New York, we wanted to get kittens but the apartments we lived in were never suitable for them (i.e. they were very small). But we did come up with names. Originally they were going to be Beatrice and Gus. Fast forward two years and we are in Uganda and there are two kittens up for grabs and we have the names all picked out except that in the meantime my brother has named his kid Gus. Beatrice was always a given.

Except that people actually use that name in Uganda. In Zanzibar we met a woman named Beatrice. The other day in the Ugandan newspaper I read about a woman named Beatrice. Just now, a woman named Beatrice rang me up in the store. Also, last night I was reading Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco and the narrator tells his girlfriend she’s his Beatrice. Being delinquent on my Dante I had to look up that Beatrice was Dante’s muse.

Before moving here I had never in my life met a Beatrice, aside from the fictional Ramona Quimby’s fictional sister.