The Creator

There was an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips, and he would occasionally bite down and chew on its end; with that skeptical frown that appeared only when something troubled him, the one she found irresistible. He would, every so often, take the smoke out of his mouth and look, puzzled and interested, at the pile of wet, brown clay before him. Maybe even touch and probe it with a finger, biting on his lower lip instead of the cigarette for a change. And, sometimes, we would smile.

She loved to look at him work.

There was something almost magical about her husband as he busied himself with the moist, stinking pile of mud; mud he would later carry and spread all over their bedroom, on the bed sheets – why did she have to buy only white ones? – and their pillows. Sometimes the smell of it, clay mixed with his scent, would linger in the room long after he was done working with it, and no matter how much she scrubbed the floor where he would work on, it still wouldn’t fade. Clay and his perfume, along with the smell of burnt cigarette. But still, she liked it.

She liked the way he surrounded himself with the familiar tools, always putting them in standard places around him, the bags of clay – half submerged into water so they wouldn’t dry up. She liked watching him, sometimes knelt on the floor next to him, sometimes on their bad, as he formed the mushy, shapeless pile into something she couldn’t still recognize; a basic shape, a “something” he would later rework into something slightly different, which would slowly start reminding her of a living thing.

She loved watching him create, because he seemed otherworldly as he did, a weird creature with many arms and fingers and eyes that could see everything, spot every wrong detail. Crouched in her little corner on the bed, she watched him, knuckles deep in brown mud, breathing life into a motionless creature he would later call his “baby”, urging her to give it a name. Because, he said, she was good with words and he was good with his hands, and together they made a complete organism.

One day she thought: he looks godly. And she crowned him her personal god of clay-ation. He laughed when she told him, hugged her face with his clay-stained fingers and gave her a kiss that smelled and tasted of nicotine and soil. She savored the taste and the low hum of his laughter in her mouth, and the moment was gone.

He rarely laughed in the presence of strangers, shy as he was. But around her, he would sometimes burst into a laughter so sudden and throaty it almost shook the earth. He would laugh at her stumbling on her feet – something that happened a lot, for she had always been clumsy – and he would laugh when they cooked something they couldn’t eat because it was too salty, and he would even laugh every time she fell asleep while watching a movie and snored loudly. Of course, she would never admit to snoring. But he still laughed.

Above all, he laughed and smiled a lot when he created things. During long, hot summer days, she would play music for him and sing as his babied formed out of nothing, those babies sometimes ending up looking beautiful or frightening, for he never made only pretty things; but he loved all the things he made, and he would always smile down upon them. During shorter winter nights, those restless ones he couldn’t find it in him to sleep because the ideas piled in his head like columns of clay, we would laugh a low, thundering laughter that would wake her up, make her shift under the warm blankets. “Having a pair of hands, you can put to good use” he used to say “that’s all you need in this life.”

It was the accident that cost him his arms, elbow down, that also deprived him of his laugher.

She was at work when she heard, a trembling mass of arms and legs rushing to the hospital. The body on the cold, white hospital bed was wrapped in white gauze, the stumps of his arms neatly placed at the sides of his torso, the face of her husband a motionless, cold mask, like those of ancient Greek theater. When he saw her, he didn’t laugh, didn’t even smile as she stumbled her way to him. She should have known it, right then and there.

But she hoped.

She hoped when the doctor visited a few hours later, prescribing pills and ointments. She hoped when she took him home, bathed and fed him like a baby. She hoped when he laid on their bed, eyes peering through the ceiling at night, a burning cigarette he couldn’t smoke on his nightstand.

She nearly stopped hoping when, two weeks after the accident he fell, purposefully, on the drying piles of clay he had been storing during the previous months, threw them on the floor and stepped on them with a kind of hatred she had never guessed existed inside him. Yes, it’s safe to say she almost stopped hoping when this altered, almost unknown man turned his face to her and glared with a pair of flaming eyes, shaded by his frown which no longer held puzzlement. It now hosted wrath, and despair and fear.

She loved him more, then. And deep down in her heart she also pitied him, but that she would never admit even to herself.

The face of the man she had known so well started to change, day by day. Sometimes he would be furiously pacing up and down their small apartment, angrily glaring at every object he couldn’t touch anymore; always keeping his gaze cautiously away from the tools and supplies he used to use for his creations. Other times – those he thought his wife couldn’t see him – he would stand before the clear cases his works were displayed in, protected by air and dust and heat, his eyes as glassy as the cases, moist and sad.

What she hated most of all, though, was these times he forgot he had no arms – he could still somehow feel them – and tried to reach for something, a glass of water, his lighter, a doorknob, only to stop mid-motion to realize he couldn’t grasp it. Then his face would steel, and his eyes would drain of all emotion, his lips thinning to a pale pink line; he would leave the room and whatever he was doing, knock over furniture on his way to their bedroom and stay in there for hours on end. He couldn’t even lock the door.

Days became weeks and weeks turned to months; her husband had almost disappeared, his face hidden behind the wrinkles of a permanent scowl. Unable to reach him, she withdrew to herself, and now they spent the nights apart; him on the couch, watching tv, her curled on her side of the bed, reading her books and scribbling her thoughts on a piece of paper.

One day she wrote down: he who loses their hope, loses their smile. And she slept on it, a plan forming in her mind as she dreamt of her husband the way he had been before the accident.

A few days later, he walked in their bedroom and found her crouching on the floor, wearing an old tee shirt of his. Scattered around her feet were pieces of clay, bowls of water and sculpting tools. He stayed there for a minute, awkwardly watching her dipping her hands in the muddy waters, making a mess out of everything she touched. Then he turned his back to her and left the room.

The same thing happened the next day, and the day after that. Every time he walked in their bedroom, she would still be kneeling on the floor, dissecting and building, scraping and adding. To his surprise, two weeks later, his wife was still working with scrap pieces of clay, and his studying, knowing eye saw the details and the flaws, and his mouth twitched and if he still had fingers they would twitch as well, for his wife was an amateur and knew nothing of proportions or techniques. Her messiness gave him a headache and an itch he couldn’t scratch.

Until, one night – he swore to every known god, he didn’t intend to – he sat by her on the floor. Almost accidentally, his stumps took hold of her arms and pushed and navigated, guided through the wet mush of the brown clay. He used her arms for a few minutes, then stopped and looked at his wife. She was smiling despite the tears running down her cheeks.

Before them stood the clay face of a man, mouth gaping in rage, eyes spilling rivers of rage. But her husband’s face was, for the first time, serene, and his lips were smiling.

***

This is dedicated to my boyfriend, lover and partner in life and creativity who also happens to be my inspiration half of the times I write a story. 

"Our worst, shared fear" is the loss os use of hands/body parts. 

Love, Anna