What a wonderful, beautiful, excellent machine, the balloon!
--Gondolfier
At first it was cruel, it was truly cruel shoes. We went about as if in a daze, as if the whole world were a fuzzy bowl. Were we, in fact, in a daze? It seems unlikely. But the result was the same, and it was cruel.
Bump! we went, bump! People, disconcerted by the collisions, would give the cold shoulder, regardless of any other factors. Dogs, yelping, would speed away into the night, supposing us to be vampires or bandits or cruel robbers. And we, alone, would stand unawares, hearing many sounds, understanding nothing.
That, then, was how we met Rodolf Gondolfier, a balloonist. On the first night before the spring equinox, just when things start getting happy in the households, the man, seeing our state, came up and gave us each in turn a live child to care for. Assuming, it would seem, that a sense of importance would be born of the responsibility. In this he was typical, so far: in the belief that we lacked a sense of importance. Very well, a fuzziness existed, we were out of the realms, but were we out of all realms? Was it truly the end, this blocking-out of our palaver from the streams of Man? Assumptions made, admittedly, hastily. Yet who can forgive the insensitivity of the healthy?
Back to Gondolfier. This man, despite his careless assumption, was unique in the effusiveness of his manner. Live children were contraband at the time; a certain danger lurked in the air. But bring he did, and before we knew it, why there were a good passel of runts assembled before our bodies. We named them, though they already had names: this was to instill a true sense of proprietorship. We named them Candy and Joel and Rubicon and Flo and Cherished and Sidney and Frangie and Pretzie. At the end of the naming, which took place on a roof, we had cookies and fruit, and some of us offered some to the children in the first gestures of protection--this although no formal introduction to the art of puericulture had yet been given us by this man, Rodolf Gondolfier. That he intended to show us the ropes was evident, but as yet he was silent.
The truth of the matter is this: he was, in a limited respect, irresponsible. He did not live up to this promise of instruction, he did not even mention it again during his entire benefit stay. Which meant that it was all up to us. Now do you know what? Have you been paying attention? If so, you will have noticed that some of us had already started on our parenting there on the roof. Well, those few were in advance of the rest of us. Head start. There was nothing to be done, we sprinted out from the void we were in and accomplished things ourselves as well: a fruit here, a chuck roast here, everything was soon in order.
Frangie died. He was the first. Someone noticed that we had named him after the adjective "frangible" and said that perhaps this was the cause of his demise; the rest of us pooh-poohed the suggestion. He died, we thought, from a lack of vegetables: vegetables, it was obvious, were lacking in sufficient quantity to supply necessary vitamins and minerals. We purchased vegetables. With the chucks and the fruits and now the vegetables, we could count on healthy and immortal (from our point of view) kids.
It wasn't interesting, however. Rubicon, fourteen, would often amuse us with his parlor tricks, with his handstands and footswings and headlips, but he was the only skilled among them. And of his tricks we soon tired. They paled, his tricks. So we ordered new ones. And when he told us in that mincing voice of his that he knew no more but that he could (and here we detected a wink) find some at the library, we suspected infidelity and a wish to go forth into the world. But was he not a gift? He didn't know our force. We attached our Rubicon to the statue of Goliath hard by the refectory, Goliath with pan flutes, and left him overnight. In the morning he was gone, abducted. It was normal, we said, and we were disconsolate a good long time, so we cared extra joyously for the rest.
But they can do little. One little girl can read, and she reads us stories; one little boy can swim, and he splashes us with water when we need to be clean; one child has a horse-laugh that can furnish joy at times.
But in truth we are chopfallen. Our slough of despond cannot be masked, our gloom is not contrivance. We are alone, these children tell us, we are alone alone alone. Gondolfier is cruel, he is truly cruel shoes