The Argument Toad

What it looks like, and what it does

A fat mottled toad on a stone floor beside a dresser, its throat pulsing, eyes half-closed in a satisfied look. Around it a kitchen kept in careful order. A cracked plate. Two coats hung on separate pegs.

Settles in the quietest corner of the busiest room. Its throat pulses at the first raised voice.

What is known

It arrives in a marriage's eleventh year, say the old people. Neighbours report a sudden calm.

It swells. At a certain size it will burst, and the quarrels come out all at once, in every voice. Households that know feed it a spoonful of honey and carry it to the garden before then.

What it can do

• Swallows one sentence from every argument in the room
• Releases all of them at once when it bursts

Where it stops

• Cannot swallow a sentence that has been apologised for
• Leaves of its own accord when the household stops quarrelling

An encounter

Abbott was brought a toad in a shoebox by a couple who sat very far apart. “It's been very peaceful,” the husband said, and the wife agreed, and neither could look at the other. Abbott recommended the garden, and honey, and, if they could manage it, a conversation.

Cheryl Abbott, marriage counsellor, A kitchen in Salter's Row, The eleventh year of a marriage

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Five households report a toad, a long peace and a day on which the peace ended.
• rumor: That the same toad has been in a dozen kitchens.
• interpretation: The calm is not a gift. It is a loan, and the toad is the broker.

Still unresolved

Toads recovered from households have never contained anything. The sentences go somewhere else.

Where it has been recorded

• Salter's Row (confirmed) — Recorded by Cheryl Abbott, marriage counsellor.

Stories about it

• The Argument Toad in the Kitchen (Entity story, 4 min) — A toad lives in the corner of a kitchen on Halden Road and swallows one sentence from every quarrel that starts in the room, so the household is peaceful for years, until the day the toad is asked to give one back.

Connected entities

• The Understory — Both take what is said between two people. The Understory edits it. The Toad stores it and gives it back all at once.