The Miniature Wife: and Other Stories by Manuel Gonzales Read Free Book Online

waving it high enough for you?
    Part of the house, now, is entirely hers. She has set traps, trip wires. She nearly took me down the other day as I ventured into the kitchen, feeling all at once like Gulliver brought down by the Lilliputians, as thin but strong hemp twine twined its way around my ankles, my waist, my wrists. I stumbled into the stove but then shoved myself back and out of the kitchen, landing flat on my back, but with enough force to break the twine around my ankles, and quickly, then, I stood and kicked and screamed, in case she was nearby, ready to pounce again.
    She has stuck tiny spears into the carpet, has formed a perimeter around her camp. Small spears bearing the heads of a spider or two, and some cockroaches, and at night, I can see a small bonfire and I stare at it, transfixed, wondering what she is burning. Pieces of carpet? Or insects? Or what?
    Her camp. That’s where I am headed now. I will follow in her footsteps. It will be difficult and, small now as I am, blind in one eye, weak from lack of sleep, I doubt that I will make it very far, certainly not to her camp, and if I do make it through the living room and across the cold landscape of the kitchen and into the den where she waits for me, then I can only guess at the fate that awaits me there. But I will do everything in my power, will fend off hordes of spiders or cockroaches if necessary, will sacrifice my right eye if only it will allow me even the one last opportunity to creep up on her as she sleeps, wrap my hands around her thick neck, and strangle the life out of her tiny body.

William Corbin: A Meritorious Life
     
    C ORBIN, WILLIAM (1570–1660). Clown. Place of birth: Manchester, England. After he died, William Corbin’s body was taken, in secret and at great peril to his acolytes, back into the heart of the Klounkova Territories, where, on a modern map, one might now find Moldova, though at one point, the Klounkova Territories ranged from the edge of the Black Sea and westward into the European continent, cutting large swaths through the Ukraine and Romania and parts of Bulgaria. Corbin was interred in the southern flatlands of Moldova, though it had been his wish to be buried deeper in, nearer the center of the Klounkovan encampments. In the end, his friends and followers dared not risk discovery by the nomadic and restless Klouns.
    Corbin owed his fascination with Klouns to his father, a village constable, who often took his three sons (of which William was the youngest) to variety acts and lowbrow, death-defying street shows, carnivals performed by traveling circuses hailing from Eastern European regions near or bordering the Black Sea. Inevitably, performing as part of one troupe or another, would be a Kloun, who, big-footed, of pale complexion, and with an over-expressive face, would often steal the show through popular movement skits and drama tumbles and the performance of ineffable sleights of hand. Although Corbin’s father detested the antics and the appearance of Klouns, William was enthralled by the graceful movements achieved by their curious and oblong shapes. Time and again, William would sneak past his father and watch with fascination, as “even their emboldened eyebrows danced along the contours of their paper-white faces.”
    One day, a young William broke from his family, found his way to a small congregation of Klouns, separate from the amassing crowd, and offered himself to them as an apprentice:
    Only after meeting them face-to-face, standing not two feet away, did I realize the truth of their size, speed & strength. Clearly, they stood a head taller than my own father, if not taller still, and were fit with powerful legs & exaggerated forearms. Silent they were as three stood & before I knew they had yet moved, surrounded me & lifted me above their heads. One supported my legs, the second my neck & shoulders, while the third walked alongside & beneath me, & they turned me over & over again, as if I were