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LENG-TCH'E |
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by Robert Nagler This man is being dismembered like a doll. His skin is pinched up like the rubber skin of a doll, a knife is pressed in, then turned until long or short strips of skin can be removed. Like the joints of a doll, the elbows, the knees, the ankles are taken apart. The men who dismember this man work hard. When they are not working, they sit at board games or cards and they are preoccupied with turning of cards, the counting of spots on markers. When they win, they are satisfied and they are angry when the spots don't add to advantage. They enjoy company. They joke and laugh; loud and soft, they gossip. When their very young children say things that seem clever, they are startled and proud. Some love beautiful things, some can't and just like pretty things. They are dumbstruck by the beauty of certain persons. They touch their skin, the skin like silk, the silk like still water. They long for the act of physical love. They love comfort. In Winter, they burrow the counterpane. When summer sweat drips in their eyes, they curse. They feel pain before they pinch the candle. These men dismember another man. They are disgusted by this work but it's THEIR work. They narrow their eyes and only look at the cut in progress. The detail. They don't look at the man's face (he just looks like a log with a human head attached now). They recoil, but work. Their stomachs tighten, their throats tighten, they struggle to show no emotion but their faces long to twist into something terrible. But they work. To be disgusted without portraying disgust is work. To show emotion less, less than an autistic child silently picking at a doll, the child revenging its own madness, pinching up the rubber skin, twisting apart the joints -- for these men to do this work and portray no emotion IS work, hard work. (Df: Pekin qui s'en va, ed. A. Maloine, Paris, 1913.) Oxford, PA
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