The evening before the celebration was sweltering. For months, the people had complained of the cold and now they longed for it. After an overpowering collective desperation to be warm, the human lizards in search of a hot rock were now in flames. A heat so dank and pervasive had not hit the small mountain town for decades and the citizens were struck with a sweat induced mania.
The oldest child of the baker, a 25 year old man named Phillipe, was the first to go. He began by twisting his foot slightly to the left, clicking his fingers together and thrusting his groin and inverting his buttocks. It was as if he was dancing to some beautiful melody made up of quick and slow, soft and sharp. It was intoxicatingly hypnotic and the crowds began to hop and flick, like a great amphibian mass, each person moulding into the next.
He had been preparing the bread for the banquet when his eyes glazed over, glassy like a boiled sweet, and his long hair broke free of the hair net and began to sway as if blown by a secret wind. Phillipe dropped the gooey bread mix which clung to his tight, muslin shirt but still his body continued to gyrate and swivel as he moaned and groaned along to a vigorous rhythm. The mixture lay at the feet of Phillipe’s companion, a young man who was visiting from the city, who sat mesmerized as Phillipe moved through the kitchen with a lava like fluidity and trickled into the street. He followed, and copied Phillipe’s hips as they moved left, then right, then left again. The two men began to move in and out of the others shadow, a swan dance, rolling their spines against each-other’s as they synchronised. Soon Phillipe’s clothing clung to ever bone and muscle with sweat. His skin, slick with moisture radiated heat in the powerful sun. Each new addition to the frenzy of bodies that gathered in the square beneath the church, would echo the rhythm of Phillipe and then add their own little twist. A topless woman lay on the cobbled stones, her skirt ripped at the waist, and writhed in the dust and refuse until she was covered in dirt and grime.
As the bacchanalian swarm continued in their impulses, a dark cloud was forming above the mountain. It was afternoon now, the sun was still beating but as they danced the dust gathered and fed into the already thick mist; a guzzling beast above the city. Still they continued and more and more bodies joining the amorphous lump of flesh. As the mass moved left, the cloud moved right, and then left again. A tango between nature and man ensued. The heavier the cloud, the rowdier the crowd.
Late into the night the heat clung to their bodies, and it was not until dawn that the dust cloud began to dissipate. As the sky cleared, the crowd dispersed leaving behind torn rags of summer, worn down soles of winter boots and a mass of hair and dust. Shrugging off the momentum of the collective, Phillipe returned to the bakery; his nerve endings twinging and his joints crackling. There was little time before the banquet would be served at a table of clergy, politicians and local celebrities. Still the ghost of the dance haunted him as he kneaded. The indisputable power of the event; the species melting from individuality and moulding into a singular being, violently shook Phillipe so that he was on the floor of the kitchen trembling. In an attempt to cry for help, Phillipe let out a piercing, rat-like squeak that burst the lightbulbs that swung from the damp ceiling and he now lay in complete darkness. The banquet would not be complete without his bread, his tarts, his cake and puddings.
Just then, the door thrust open and a large man, clad in leather and fox hair towered over Phillipe. He had a soft beard and wore bottle green spectacles decorated with small ceramic frogs, tree snakes and other sea dwelling serpents. It was the renowned equestrian, known to Phillipe only by the nickname ‘STRIKE’ for it is rumoured that he won his first horse having defeated a local barn owner in a miniature bowling rink of marbles and match sticks.
Strike paced the room and then stopped. He gently nudged Phillipe with his suede boot and commanded him to rise. Phillipe, like a rag doll, rose and flopped on top of the oven. Strike lent over Phillipe and patted his head, he lit a match and turned on the gas. Howling, Phillipe shot up and sprinted to the door way. Strike commanded him to halt and he did so. At this moment, Phillipe felt like an electric current was pulsing through his veins. Strike clicked his fingers and Phillipe followed as he led him out of the bakery and onto cobbled streets. Phillipe followed dutifully until they reached a small well. Here, Strike took out from his leather pocket a marble and a match stick, and placed them at opposite ends of the rim of the well. Softly, with only his knuckles, Strike nudged his marble and it rolled around the lips of the well and the matches tumbled in a neat cascade. Each match fell forward but the marble kept on rolling, as it made its way around the well, Phillipe watched in awe and his body began to move. First his index fingers in a clawing motion, then his neck with a snake like oiliness up and down and up and down. Strike watched as the marble made another lap of the well and Phillipe compulsively danced. Both men in telepathic cahoots began to move away, back into the cobbled streets, back into the square, far away from the well. As they progressed Phillipe’s feet began to prance and lift. His body airy and free. Strike watching and hopping through the shadows, spritely in his own cumbersome way.
Soon the air was still. Both men stood outside the bakery, there was an hour left before the banquet was to be served. Phillipe, pale and glowing, stood completely still. The unconscious acknowledgment of kindred-ship, before it has even entered the mind, was like a lightning bolt. It struck both, without their knowledge. The marble still rolled around the well. It was cool now. Phillipe returned to the kitchen. Strike followed but this time he approached with an ease and a friendliness that made Phillipe feel that he had known him for his whole life. The urge to dance, the manic compulsion to move and thrust, had left him. It seemed to Phillipe that baking was the only thing he had left to do. The only thing he could clearly see and understand.
The morning came and went, Phillipe presented each guest with a piece of cake, a macaroon or a baguette. The nobility, the esteemed, came and went and returned to their habitat outside of the city. How charming they found the town. How wonderful the meal had been, how cool the air.
That evening, Phillipe moved through the town with fox like stealth. He arrived at the well at the time of evening when a dewy mist descends on the long grass and a frog hops over the foot. He was warm inside now, but he could feel the breeze. He sat on the paving stone, still hot from the blaze of before, and waited. His friend had returned to the city, the other townsmen were in their houses; sofa’s, armchairs, beds. But Phillipe waited. Time had passed and people had left, his loneliness, his individual singularity swelled and beamed like a red sore. When once he had been hot and moving, he was now a small, cold island.
Phillipe waited but he did not watch, in the way that an expectation may be met with a disappointment, he avoided the inevitable. Instead of the well, he fixated on a tree branch; tired and dry and worn. A small habitat, crawling with ants and shield-bugs and wood louse. Each moving and weaving between the other, a collection, a congregation of the living. Phillipe’s hands, like a pianists’, trained and fluid, began to knead and pound at his legs. He did not feel that each part- the hand, the foot, the leg, belonged to his whole. Each mechanical part now moved freely. The symbiosis of his body as a mechanism was defunct. He himself was now a creation made of parts, that no longer belonged to the whole.
While he sat and moved, the marble rolled, and while the marble rolled, the clergy, the politicians and the celebrity guests slept in beds, armchairs and sofas in the city.