Ballet

  David crept through the rooms of the flat he and his wife shared.
Because she was a dancer, they had converted an extra room into a studio;
mirrors and barsabove the hardwood floors.  David was an unemployed amateur
geologist who dreamt of matriculating for a doctorate and regard.  He had
an enormous appreciation for rocks. They were perfect, to him, the only
thing perfect.  He liked to put them at strategic positions in the apartment,
particularly in the studio.  His wife is always taking his rocks and hiding
them somewhere, but he's never been able to find them.  It maddens him. He
burns her toe-shoes so that she won't move his rocks, but she buys new ones.
She was at rehearsal, and he was placing his rocks.
  His wife's friends hated him.  He knew this, but didn't care.  They were
ignorant. They didn't understand the genius of rocks.  They thought he was
lunatic.  He thought they were aliens.  What is more permanent than rock?
What is solid as rock?  What comes in as many colors, shapes, sizes?
Nothing is as timelessly immobile.  He liked to move them; it was a worship,
like the care of an ominous yet phenomenal person when they become infirm.
They liked to be moved by him...only him, for he was their avatar.

  David dressed warmly that night.  He pulled on his old greatcoat and
pushed in the immense pockets he had installed. He deposited a large piece
of white marble in the right one.  It was more than a handful.
  He walked quickly up motionless backstreets and alleys, his breath a thick
momentary mist leading his steps.  He neither whistled nor hummed nor spoke
to himself; if he had a choice, he wouldn't have breathed either.  He
wouldn't have moved or allowed himself to be so soft.  He was in despair
by the time he reached the cemetery gates.
  The gates were propped open, and he brushed through, following the dirt
road across the neat fields of stones.  The gravel ground beneath his feet
for several stepsbefore he considered it, bent to scoop up a handful, and
cooed to it as he stepped onto the grass.  He slipped the pebbles into his
pocket and began to thread his way around the stones, letting his fingers
graze them as he passed. They were smooth, cut, and ordered.  His grief
grew within him.
  Rounding the side of a hill he came, finally, to the low, tin shed where
an old mason cut stones for the new dead.  The man was hunched over a small
granite plaque. He would chip away with a fine chisel, stop to brush the
face with his hand, chip again.  He was absorbed in his work and the
high-tensile music of it.
  David drew the stone slowly from his pocket, charged the old man and
smashed him three times in the back of the head.  Blood rushed from the
crushed skull, pooling silently in the letters of the plaque.  David wiped
the marble on the man's shirt, replaced it in his pocket, and wandered into
the dark.

  The next morning, David returned to the apartment.  A trash truck had just
finishing dumping the dumpster into its compartment, and as it was lowered
David recognized a rock behind the dumpster's spot.  He sped up the stairs;
burst through the door.  There were no stones in the kitchen.  He ran into
the studio; none.  He set thepiece of marble carefully on the hardwood planks.

  David found his wife asleep in the bedroom.  He woke her gently and helped
her to sit.  Holding her by the front of her nightgown, he hooked her with
all he had across the chin.  Her head spun violently around.  He struck her
once more.  She wentout, crumpled on the bed.  He moved to his closet and
removed his heavy hand hatchet and his wooden Go board.  After sliding the
board beneath her ankles, David raised the hatchet high and severed her feet
with two sharp cuts.
  He walked the rooms examining angles, lighting, color contrasts.  He chose
her studio; set her feet in opposite corners of the room, facing one another.
David watched them for days.  He slept in the studio; dreamt of them.  After
two days, he had his revelation.
  He carried her feet into kitchen and took a fillet knife from a drawer.
Cutting in meticulous layers, he stripped them of the skin, muscle, ligaments
and tendons.  He washed the blood off the bones in the sink.  He carried them
back to the spots they had occupied before, and piled them into little
pyramids.
They were a realization; impediments not to be disturbed.


ú: Fl–x   ú:ú   Bl/´DE :ú