Huh!!...Soulsmith is not a name !!!
.:: Who is CoolSoulSmith? ::. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
:: ~~~:: Sleepless in Melawati ::~~~
:: bloghome
::
::
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Thursday, August 08, 2002The Box Princess By Mac McKean No one, of course, knew about his strange behavior in the mornings. Getting up at dawn, Tanuma would experience an overwhelming urge to urinate. Not that this was strange. Some might even envy a biological regularity like this, a reassuring certainty in an uncertain world. It was how he went about it. Each morning as he stood before his expensive ash-wood toilet, received as a gift, he would realize in a mood of black desolation and fear that he'd spent the last eight or so hours in the total aloneness of sleep. Loneliness, as he stood in the cavernous bathroom, would overwhelm him. He would fear that he might go on being alone for the rest of his life, that maybe his friends had deserted him, that he had been ousted from power, the servants had left and even that thing, his wife, who lived in apartments on the other side of the mansion, would be gone. He would imagine emerging to find his house deserted, the whole neighborhood empty, possibly the city, the country, the world. As the urine began to flow he would tremble violently, scattering his morning water all over the floor and missing the beautiful toilet completely. The last drop wouldn't have splashed somewhere before he would close his robes running out to the main rooms and shouting, "I'm up! I want breakfast! Set out my clothes!" The servants would appear in dozens, but he would already be heading for the foyer, which would be stacked with hundreds of packages, every one of them a bribe from someone hoping for a favor in return. Only the sight of this evidence that he was needed and respected in the world could calm him. The toilet maid explained the mess he left as the bad aim of an old man. "I've heard it happens with age," she'd say bending over the puddles with a rag. Tanuma was a politician. He was in fact, "The First Politician," Chief Advisor to the Shogun, and as the Shogun was more or less known neither to want responsibility nor to be competent to handle it, Chief Advisor Tanuma was the nation's virtual ruler. He exchanged favors for bribes with a ferocity never before seen; he would do anything for a bribe and nothing without one not even for a friend. "Gold and silver," he said, "are more important than life itself. Without them we're beasts - I might not be the first to say that, but I'm the best at honestly living out what it means." He happened to be a fair administrator, but it's no surprise he had enemies, especially among those too righteous or poor to give the bribes that would bring his largesse their way. No one at the time, and few later, knew who gave him the bribe that sent everything spinning. Some speculate that the giver must indeed have been one of his many enemies, but those informed by the truth know this is ridiculous. In any case, it arrived anonymously and mysteriously during the night, in a velvet covered box. There was only a card with a brief phrase describing the contents as a rare princess doll. He opened the box in a hurry to find actually the most gorgeous and lifelike doll he'd ever seen. It was dressed in an expensive silk robe woven with the images of silver humming birds pecking the necks of swans. It had ivory-white skin, hair combs made of whale-bone and eyes so real he thought for a moment they blinked. A moment later, he was sure they blinked. He drew closer. The chest seemed to be rising and falling with small breaths. "A mechanical doll!" he said with amazement and reached out one old finger adorned with a gold, ivory-inlaid ring given by a samurai wanting a court appointment. Grinning with glee, he poked the doll in the cheek, and the doll gasped. Its features contorted into an expression of terror, while Tanuma pulled back in horror looking at his finger to see that some of the doll's white skin had come off on his finger. He tripped on something behind him and fell, and the servants rushed forward thinking his heart had given out. They didn't notice the doll had also collapsed and was crumpled in the bottom of its box. Tanuma got back on his feet and after a little confusion figured out the white skin that came off on his finger was facial powder. The doll wasn't a doll; it was real. He approached her. She was standing again now too. He smelled her over like a suspicious dog. He studied her face, her posture, her hands. He smiled in satisfaction..... [ continue ] 10,000 Liesby Mac McKean 
---------------------------
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
FastCounter by bCentral |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
