Until Marv’s death, I had only ever seen one picture of Raphael and Brunya, his parents – an image of a dapper, elegant Gatsby man seated in tall grass beside his round faced, curly haired lady with deep, expressive eyes.  Marv never made any comparisons between Pammy and I, and his family – no sentiments such as “You’ve got your grandmother’s eyes,” and so on.  It almost seemed like a superstition with him to avoid discussing what they had been like, as if knowing about them might make some negative quality or powerful flaw contagious.   During our last week together, though, Dad found me dressed to go out in my striped corduroy pants and medallion print shirt.  “My mother always wore prints together like a gypsy,” he said with amusement and, I think, some pride.  “I never knew that,” I said.  “Oh, she was a gypsy, a real gypsy at heart!”

Other kids thought the Jungle Book was a Disney movie with goofy songs;  I thought it was part of my father’s wardrobe,  since for several years of my life, he was rarely seen without one volume or another of Kipling’s fables of animals who behave like humans, or a little bit better.  Kipling imbued his monkeys, the Bandar Log, with our callow, smug, self-satisfaction, reflected in their motto: We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true. 

Here is an excerpt from the Road Song of the Bandar Log:

Here we sit in a branchy row,
Thinking of beautiful things we know;
Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,
All complete, in a minute or two–
Something noble and wise and good,
Done by merely wishing we could.
     We’ve forgotten, but–never mind,
     Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!