Story for performance #830
webcast from Sydney at 05:55PM, 28 Sep 07

For the eight days after the circumcision, Moishe sleeps with his sister Lusitania, his back curled into her stomach. When he shivers at night she wraps one leg gently around him like an extra blanket and he falls back into his favourite dream, wherein Lusie is a friendly ferret, he is a rabbit, sister Mina is a blue sparrow and Mama Miriam is a giant talking carrot.

They picnic in the dream. Ferret and Sparrow carry Rabbit in a huge picnic hamper as he directs them towards a large, multi-fruited tree nearby. Giant Carrot is already sitting there on a purple mushroom bandstand, legs crossed. She conducts an orchestra of oranges, peaches, grapefruits and limes, all of which have fallen out of the tree just to be able to play. It’s a symphony written just for Moishe the rabbit, and as he and Mina and Lusie crest a small ridge of the brightest red grass imaginable, ferret and sparrow begin to sing along, gentle nonsense, words turned inside out and rearranged so they resemble flowers. The rabbit is suddenly hungry, and the picnic hamper is full of nothing but himself. So ferret and sparrow sing into the hamper and rabbit eats the flowers that fall around him. They are delicious and he salivates honey, which Mina and Lusie, careful not to bite and peck, lick from his mouth.

They arrive under the fruit tree and Miriam stops conducting to wave hello with her frilly green top. She asks the musicians if they would like her to play anything, and a tiny peach cries out, ‘do the big whirly vegetable dance!’ The citrus fruits cheer in agreement. Miriam acquiesces, and begins to gyrate on the purple mushroom. She spins so rapidly her shape is lost, and her orange hue deepens to red. When she stops abruptly, everyone can see she has become a juicy tomato. There is wild applause. Miriam takes a bow deep as a tomato can, and twirls again. The red blur flames to yellow and she reveals herself as a shiny pepper. The animals and fruits ‘huzzah’ in admiration. The yellow pepper tilts demurely and spins once again, briefly glowing blue, which elicits a murmur of expectation from the small crowd. She twirls through all the colors of the spectrum until at last, after a slow winding down, she raises her green tops, now silver, revealing the carrot she was, only now in a magnificent sheen of gold.

The standing ovations and rondos of ‘brava! bravissima!’ go on and on until they become the sound of the alarm clock going off in the morning.

On the ninth day, Moishe wakes up late in an empty bed. In the hallway he hears the bustling whispers of his mother and sisters. He looks over to the nightstand to see what time it is but the clock is gone, though there is a still burning Chesterfield in the bedside ashtray. It must still be morning judging from the clean, clear light coming through the blinds. He slides his legs apart, lies still as he feels the coolness of the sheets. Mina’s squeal comes faintly from the other side of the apartment, and Moishe hears the sound of a very large number of unidentified objects tumble to the floor. He feels the vague tremor of whatever they are hitting the floor. He contemplates staying in bed forever, and, resolving to do just that, he feels himself getting up.

Moishe wanders to the front parlor in the sluggish pace of stiff, sleepy steps. There he finds a dozen boxes, some sealed, most though with books and clothing spilling out. Strewn about the floor are many pairs of Lusitania’s usual black men’s shoes and two brand new pairs of ladies shoes. One pair—the only pair in a box—is like nothing he has ever seen. The heels are impossibly high, with platforms at the front. They are black velvet with a strap around the ankle that is secured by an engraved silver buckle. Inside the uppers there is a white silk lining with Lusie’s initials stamped in black. The heels are also wrapped in velvet, and are as high as his hand. He holds one by the heel; it seems more like a statue of a shoe than a shoe itself. He rubs the velvet against his cheek for a long minute. Then he feels the familiarity of Lusie’s hand against his other cheek.

She is finally leaving. These boxes are her things, though she tells Moishe that they don’t feel like hers, that she would prefer to travel with a great deal less, that she is not looking forward to having so little freedom at university to dress as she pleases and—here she picks up the other velvet platform—that if she has to dress up she is at least going to do it interestingly. She asks Moishe if he wants to wear the shoes. He has thought of nothing else since he spied them. For the rest of the day, as Miriam, Mina and Lusie sort through sweaters and anatomy guides, trousers and history treatises, cufflinks and astronomy charts, scarves and novels, Moishe strides the long apartment hallway in Lusitania’s shoes. His toes grip their fronts hard so his feet will stay in them, and one strap is undone because nothing will hold him in anyway. Half the time he walks right out of them, and by lunchtime his calf muscles ache just slightly from his new posture. By dinnertime Lusie has to pack them, and when she puts them back in the box they look as if they are being put in a coffin for burial. He worries if he will never see them again. Then he worries, for the first time, that he will never see Lusie again.

Adapted for performance by Barbara Campbell from a story by Alexandra Keller.