The Glutton

by A.K. Blakemore

The boy feels that if his body stopped moving even for a moment, if he stopped putting one foot in front of the other, his shadow would simply, soundlessly detach itself from his bulk and continue in a smooth, autonomous glide eastward, away from the setting sun. And that is what death would look like. He would slump onto his stomach and reach his swollen fingers out toward that indifferent adumbration as it slid further and further away across the field, across other fields, across the rooftops, and then eventually to the sea (the sea, which the boy has never seen), where it would be lost on the fretted silver among the other shadows of the other boys gone before their time.

Tarare sees how the women can never let their hands fall idle, how they work them until their muscles wear to strings, work their hands into ragged claws, so that to Tarare’s young eyes they look like a tribe of great fire-worshipping birds, huddled there at the veillée in their black shawls. He will remember this, a breast in his mouth and the great birds gathered by the great fire, after he forgets most of what follows. It is where he comes from.

Who would claim the luxury of a big heart, or the bijou of a smile, when he is raised on a diet of boiled grass and stale bread? He should rightly be miserable, think those who despise him, like I am.