Black Pudding

Black Pudding

"If I were placed as high as the duke, I should stick as fast, make as fair a show, and bear out weather equally." – The White Devil

There in the shadowplay, one slowly wriggles another out of the little window to punctuate the hour with a thump, rid of the din of accoutrements that can speak of distinction and life accomplishments on better days. Only a crepuscular lump and saved breath. The guide in drag says it is very becoming to wait for an Oxford or Yale scholar to be understood. That it is worth the time, and is more nuanced, more rewarding than the sealed verdict of the IPP* committee of old, or the shorthand portrayal of an accomplice's glow at the gallows, where, as for the light itself, we know no more. The air gets startled by the bells of a campanile, taking their vagrant way, and my wife chimes in in Russian: "kto-to kogo-to iz okoshka vykidyvaet ponemnozhku"**.

* IPP - Inferno Purgatorio Paradiso. ** "Little by little, somebody throws somebody else out of the small window".