Inanimation

            by Shoshana Zambryski-Sachel

 

She watched as his hands caressed the soft stone, top to bottom, nearly his own height.  He sat down and stared at the block, creating an intricate blue print in his mind.  She watched as his eyes scanned the stone and then slowly closed in concentration.  She wanted that kind of focus.

            “Eliza, how’s it going over here?”
            “Oh,” she blurted, snapping out of her reverie.  “I’m still thinking about what I want to make.”

            The critical eyes of Eliza’s wizened instructor glanced down at the immobile and unchanged lump of clay in front of her.  “Alright, well, get a move on.”

            Eliza was new to the sculpture class.  It was for all levels, yet she was the only one with a cold chunk of clay as her medium.  There was the dirty woman crouched over her pottery wheel, already covered in slip as she meticulously worked the white clay into a fluid vase-like shape, which danced between her palms like a shapely woman.  In the adjoining room Eliza imagined the dark man, wrapped in his thick apron with the plastic shield of his visor pulled down to protect his eyes from the spray of shrapnel-like sparks as the hot metal melted the wire to the frame of his piece.  She knew he was there.  She had met him before the class, when the instructor had shown her around the facilities.  She couldn’t remember his name.

            There were people hammering and drilling, sawing and making casts of plaster, bronze; small slivers of wood flew from the rotating blade in the corner, and a hammer beat in tune to the rock blaring from a dented speaker, half splattered in dulled paints.  And then there was him.  Still sitting with his back against the wall, knees drawn in, eyes closed.

            Without a muscle betraying his intentions he rose, suddenly, smoothly.  He stood in front of the rock briefly before jumping into action.  Chisel in hand, he began to chip away at the waist of the stone.

            Eliza looked down at her clay.  What am I gonna do with this?  Her fingers pressed into the center of it, leaving three oblong tunnels to the core of the thing.

            The current assignment was “the human form”, however abstract.  Eliza had never been much for abstractions; her mind worked in concrete concepts and forms.  If she couldn’t see it, touch it, taste it, then it wasn’t real.  Her human would be real, a real woman, imperfectly perfect.

            Hefting the clay up with both hands she moved its weight, twisting it to find the right angle to go in from.  And then she struck, tearing at the clay with nails she probably should’ve trimmed for this class, pulling off a chunk of the cold mass.  Eliza put down the clay and focused all of her energy on the handful she had removed.  As she rolled it between her palms, leaving the creases of her hands etched into its being, it began to warm, life-like within the nest of her spindly fingers.  The fingers began to dart in and out, flowing, scraping and smoothing the surface until they put it down.  A foot.  She smiled to herself; it was a beautiful foot.  The arch rose sharply from the rounded ball that led to the tiny toes which curled in on themselves, almost in pain she thought. 

            Beside her the young man had been conducting a full-on attack of the limestone tower.  As she glanced in his direction Eliza noted his progress.  The female form was evident; the rough carvings so far had chipped away the waist to expose bulging hips and the curve of her breasts, expanding to shoulders and finally constricting to a bubble of stone.  There was no head yet.  Just the waist, the separation of top and bottom.

            Eliza sat at her work table, ignoring the foot and potential body lying in front of her as she stared, mesmerized by the easy chip chip chipping of chisel on stone.  His hands worked in perfect harmony; the left hand held the stone and created a target for the chisel nestled within the relaxed grip of the right hand before reaching for the hammer and pounding the sharp blade of the tool into the woman’s soft flesh.  She didn’t protest.  But as Eliza sat watching she felt a slight pang in her lower ribs, moving toward her bellybutton as the chisel picked at the area where a stomach might eventually appear. 

            Massaging away the pain beneath her bones Eliza forced herself back to her pathetic clay.  Next: a leg for my foot.  Ripping another section from the body of clay stationed at her right she began to gently roll it on the broken wooden surface of the table until one end was thinner than the other.  This end she began to curve down to meet the glorious foot before shaping the sausage-like appendage into calf and thigh, and a meaty knee sandwiched between.

            “I see you’re making some progress finally!  Good to see.” the plump lady had somehow snuck up behind Eliza’s left ear and was hollering into it, “Not bad for a days’ work…” 

            The instructor was mocking her, she knew, but Eliza simply beamed down at the disembodied leg between her outstretched hands.  “Thank you!”

            Taken aback by Eliza’s enthusiasm at the solitary leg on the table, the instructor’s head jumped up and down a few times like an eccentric bobble-head doll before stalking off to her other pupils who were beginning to clean up their work spaces.

 

            The next day Eliza arrived early, sitting cross-legged beside the locked door of the classroom.  Slowly the minutes passed, and the hot cup between her palms began to dwindle to no more than a drop and an ugly brown stain running down from the lip of the plastic covering. The dirty pottery lady appeared, wrapped in scarves and layered jackets of wool and cotton.  The lady smiled shiftily at Eliza, still seated on the linoleum floor. 

            Up the stairs came the grizzled gray hair of the instructor, bobbing and weaving until it reached the top of the stairs, just barely making it above the handrail.  “You two are here early, I see,” she said, nodding at the lady and Eliza, who hastily rose from her crouched position on the floor.

            Empty the room looked different.  The bright fluorescent lights refracted off the uneven shine of the floor to illuminate the tools and sculptures in an artificial glow.  Silhouetted by a clamp light in the corner, the stone woman’s back hunched ever so slightly at the shoulders.  Eliza didn’t remember the woman’s posture from the day before. 

            The room began to fill with bodies and noise, clambering and clamoring to get back to their work.  Eliza had recovered her clay, carefully wrapped in a heavy duty plastic, which was lined with a dewy glaze from the moist clay.  The foot was still there.  Still attached to the leg.  One pretty and dainty, the other full-bodied and contorted into stiff angles between its curves. 

            Her clay was cold and damp from the sheen of water that had fallen from the plastic.  Ignoring the leg and its insistence on having a match, Eliza grasped the remaining clay.  Curves emerged from it, hard and soft lines that hadn’t been there before.  Large hips exploded into being, a round and fleshy rump leading the eye along the spine of a muscular back to the shoulders bent in pain.  Beneath, the stomach folded in upon itself, creases lining soft curves from breasts, down to the rounded hint of what lay between hipbones, protruding from the pinch of waist.

            Eliza’s hands were stained an earthy red, clotted blood enveloping her skin and hiding beneath her nails. She looked at the quadriplegic form, writhing on the wooden platform of the table; the blood was hers. This clay woman had bled upon Eliza’s hands, and there she sat, accusing her. 

            Eliza looked up at the room, spasming from a sharp pain at the nape of her neck that lightly caressed her from shoulders down to hips.  It was empty save for her and the man.  She hadn’t realized he was there until now, but there he was, leaning precariously from a stepladder.  His hands were buried between the shoulder blades of his statue, wiping dust and chunks of granite from her neck and back.  Nimbly he jumped from his perch to survey the work he had done.  The torso was complete, in need of refinement and sanding but everything was there.  Muscles rippled along the spine and ribs, converging in a tight stomach pulled inward to support the forward slant and shrugged shoulders.  Balanced above the left shoulder the guise of a head turned to look at something more interesting on the opposite wall. 

Feeling the pressure on the her back lighten, Eliza

turned to look at whatever had captivated the mind of the rock and saw the instructor waddling in their direction.

“What on earth are you two still doing here?  Class ended an hour ago!  I told you specifically to clean up and go home.  I’m glad you’re showing some enthusiasm for the class Eliza, but really!” Her small hands fluttered about her reddened face and rearranged the matt of hair before taking in a deep breath to continue, “Please clean up quickly, I have to lock up, I’ve things to do you know.  I’ll see you two in the morning.” She added sternly.

As the little woman turned to the other side of the room the man chuckled, briefly glancing up to meet Eliza’s hungry gaze.

The man collected his tools to deposit in a toolbox while Eliza carefully wrapped the clay woman in her plastic garment.  It had become chilly in the classroom and Eliza shivered, muscles stiffening to a stony manifestation. As he walked by, the man put out his hand to gently caress the statues hip, lending some heat to the cold limestone, and Eliza’s own bony hip.

Gasping for breath Eliza fell forward, muscles released and relaxed as she searched for the man, but saw only his back as he turned down the corridor outside the door.  She looked at the stone woman, who averted her gaze.  She was Eliza’s height; had the same hips that always irritated her when she was shopping; the slight indent below her right breast where she had broken ribs years ago.  Walking forward Eliza placed her hand on the stone sternum, feeling the coldness under her palm, and the warmth spreading from the center of her own breastplate.

Eliza stumbled backward, fumbling to pick up her purse and decaying hoodie.  This couldn’t be real.  It was impossible.  Before walking through the frame of the door Eliza looked back.  The silhouetted figure remained, slouching and silently regarding Eliza as she lowered her eyes and left.

 

The window of the door was broken, opaque glass scattered on either side.  A graying knot of hair fell in front of the instructors face as she bent down to inspect the wreckage, gasping at the small drops of blood seeping between the ridges of the corrugated glass.

The dark man walked up the stairs, laughing loudly on his cell phone.  Reaching the hallway he looked up to find the faces of three badged officers exchanging notes.  A single line of caution tape ran across the open door.

Inside the room spots of red stumbled to the back corner lit by a single bulb clamped onto the window frame.  The stone woman stood over a figure, protecting it from the piercing glare of flashlights cautiously sweeping the room.  Eliza sat with her back against the cold stone, knees pulled up to her chest as she cradled an off white babe to her.  A fine dust of granite lay upon her like snow, expanding to spray out from the stone to where the axe lay with a powdery white crust on the blade. 

Yellow light crept along the trail of droplets, finally reaching Eliza’s hidden form. Tenderly she stroked her own cheek, then let her hand fall to the object cocooned within her arms.  Looking up into the glare of the light Eliza swayed, smiling faintly as she lowered her left arm to show a blood flecked head, disembodied and incomplete.