Falling Out of Time Read Online Free PDF

andsuch happened to me as well, and you never taught me what to do.
    MIDWIFE:
    A b-b-baby, one baby,
    were he to emerge
    from a womb into
    my w-w-waiting hands,
    my empty midwife’s
    hands, still c-c-covered
    with the dew of birth, still tied
    at the navel, bleating—
    except that
    I do not know
    whether at that moment
    he might not c-c-crumble
    in my hands
    to dust—
    But w-w-what
    is that?
    Your m-m-mouth,
    what have you
    done?!
    COBBLER: It’s nothing. I don’t—
    MIDWIFE:
    Your m-m-mouth,
    the m-m-mouth,
    open
    your mouth!
    COBBLER: No, leave it, don’t touch, they give me all my power.
    MIDWIFE:
    And I never
    n-n-noticed … How?
    I th-th-thought
    it was only when you
    worked that you … And how
    did you eat that w-w-way?
    How anything?
    T-t-take them out, please,
    I beg you, take them
    all out—
    COBBLER: No, I can’t, who’ll protect me so I—
    MIDWIFE:
Take them out!
    COBBLER: So I don’t bite me—
    MIDWIFE:
    Y-y-yes, more,
    remove them, spit them, there are
    more, and another,
    yes, give them into my hand …
    There are more, dear God,
    it’s sharp … there’s blood,
    your whole m-m-mouth
    is sores and
    rust.
    TOWN CHRONICLER: She opens the window and throws them out. I hear metallic clangs as they fall around me. The cobbler stands there amazed, his hand on his cheek and his tongue roaming his mouth, probing the emptiness.
    COBBLER: There were ten of ’em. The little ones and the big ones and the crooked ones, and a thick one with no head, what was like a thumb, I called it. They’ve been like parts of me. One for each of her tiny-tiny fingers I used to kiss.
    TOWN CHRONICLER: That evening, the walking man hears heavy footsteps behind him, and there is the cobbler, slightly hunched, and he grunts out a question: Happen to need some shoes? Theman says he doesn’t need anything, only to walk undisturbed. The cobbler looks at the man’s blistered feet and says he has, right there in his backpack, tools and a stretch of leather, and he can easily sew a fine pair of shoes. The man does not reply, and they keep walking a while longer. Finally, the cobbler asks if he may walk behind the man this way, and the man doesn’t answer, nor does he stop walking, just shrugs his shoulders as if to say: Do as you please, but I walk alone.
    Now they are two, Your Highness. You can see them from your window. At the fore, the tall, thin man with unkempt hair and beard, and a few steps behind him, the cobbler, his arms hanging at his sides. Every so often he turns his head back to see the slender, upright woman in the hut window.
    MIDWIFE:
    But if
    not,
    if the b-b-baby does not
    crumble to dust, if he stays
    warm and s-s-solid,
    wailing,
    crying,
    perhaps
    the whole w-w-world
    will return
    to be mended
    in my two hands?
    WOMAN WHO LEFT HOME:
    Five years after my son
    died, his father
    went out
    to meet him.
    I did not go
    with him.
    Atop a belfry
    in the heart of the county seat
    a hundred miles from home,
    I walk alone now
    in circles, around
    a ferrous spire, slowly
    slowly, around
    and around, nights,
    days,
    in my tiny circle,
    facing him,
    while he
    on the hilltops,
    facing me, days,
    nights,
    orbits his
    own circle.
    CENTAUR: But if I don’t write it I won’t understand.
    TOWN CHRONICLER: This, as though in passing, is what the centaur mutters at your chronicler, my lord, as I walk past his window in the evening hour—as I walk
at your command, and under profound and turbulent protest
.
    CENTAUR: I cannot understand this thing that happened, nor can I fathom the person I am now, after it happened. And what’s worse, pencil pusher, is that if I do not write it, I cannot understand who
he
is now either—my son.
    TOWN CHRONICLER: Nor do I understand what he is saying. And he, of course, does not explain. Only pricks up his nose in a proud and bombastic display of insult and turns his back on me as far as his ungainly body will allow. But he follows me from the corner of his eye, and as soon as I