Moving Parts Read Online Free Page A

assume new forms, tattered and swirling, and they are illuminated all of a sudden or, on the contrary, darken in shadow. In this way the feathery clouds of summer evenings have been transformed into storm clouds creeping ponderously across a leaden sky on dark bellies that bleed purple from their lacerated sides amid fireworks and the rumble of drum-rolls, in the cascades of a downpour. Water is the only thing they are capable of turning into when floating through the skyeventually becomes impossible: a process as violent as the transformation of future into present. After the repertoire of special effects is exhausted, the storm clouds sail on in the guise of night clouds, black against a black background, invisible. In the end, even if weeks later, they manifest themselves as white billows against a white backdrop, equally invisible, bringing an image of nothingness from which the female owner of the still-conjectured piano turns away with repugnance. The early dusk falls quietly, without the extravagant splendor of the afterglows that, for instance, during the preceding summer flamed over the garden every evening, lighting up the charming little wisps of pink fluff scattered here and there over the horizon – the same material that lends softness to padded furniture and plush toys. The same that eases sorrow, providing warmth and smoothing the merciless hardness of edges. Without which life would not be possible. It hovers high up, light, elusive. In the heavens there is nothing but transient states, nothing that can be taken into possession.
    The dry land so longed for, the solid ground of the past tense on which the foot can find support, unfortunately contains much more than necessary. It’s filled with the leftovers of other similar tales, and the fading dreams and desires of figures who are absent and irretrievably lost, mixed with the shallow sand of all the parts of speech. In the darkness of the subsoil the suns of past summer afternoons are extinguished; transitory romances crumble into dust. Eternal love gravitates towarddeeper levels of ground, where it grows damp and bereft of luster, like a tarnished wedding band. Along with it molders spurned love. The heavy layers of earth crushing it can be regarded as a metaphor for a memory incapable of forgiveness.
    If a spade were to sink into this soil, the blade would make a rasping sound, so riddled is it with the petrified word ‘why,’ a question without an answer, and so filled with shards of shattered and forgotten conditional constructions. How much of this debris could lie in the rectangle of the garden, surrounded by its chain-link fence? No one will take the trouble to count rocks that are of no value whatsoever. It’s hard to say which one comes from which structure and what story it belongs to – this one or another – for unasked questions always take on the same indefinite shape, always the same murky shade of regret. If only they could be dug up and disposed of by the ruthless, tried and tested method of the mercenary corn cartels, whose brokers are constantly monitoring the changing prices in the tables of the commodities markets, and thanks to the amazing new capabilities of wireless telegraphy can manage market swings, in an emergency ordering the crews of steamers to throw burlap sacks of wheat into the ocean without a second thought. The sky in its indifference remains discreet; all around there is nothing but water, impatient and rippling. The voracious sea fish are already waiting, ready to gnaw through the burlap and swallow any amount of grain. But even they will not touch rocks. Meanwhile, in the depths the tireless oceancurrents sweep up everything that lies in their path and cast it on land many sea miles, many calendar years away.
    And what if one were to begin to fence off the stories, just for the sake of order, so it might be known which one begins and ends where, and who it belongs to? One thing is for certain: